


The Bathhouse at Midnight

by Semyaza



Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-05-09
Updated: 2012-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semyaza/pseuds/Semyaza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frodo learns that there's more to the Gamgee family than he'd realised.  A lot more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Sam Makes a Bold Decision

"Slumgullion!" said Sam, wiggling his toes contentedly in the muddy track which led to the garden gate. "If this isn't a fine Shire morning. Rain yesterday and rain tomorrow but no rain today."

"So it would seem," answered Frodo. "Odd thing, weather. But as I was saying -- if I were to replace the portrait of Balbo Baggins with an etching of the Hill at Midsummer, do you suppose Bilbo would --" He grimaced with an expression which was startlingly like that of his great-great-grandfather, though Sam would never dare to tell him.

"Sir?"

"You know."

"Know what?" asked Sam, flicking his eyes over the bare flower border as if the disposition of Frodo's gewgaws was of little moment to a Gamgee. Balbo had been handsome enough in his day, but the years had not dealt kindly with the varnish. He should have been relegated to the mathom-room long since.

"Mind," Frodo said. "Would he mind?"

Sam paused in his consideration of the garden chores and his sandy brows furrowed. He wasn't inclined to think o'ermuch before second breakfast, but he knew diddle-daddle when he heard it.

"Wherever he is, Mr. Frodo, he'll have more to mind than ancestral daubs, begging your pardon. Spiders, trolls and _dwarves_," he added with relish.

Sam had been reluctant to give credit to Bilbo's fireside tales, yet doubtless there were far worse dangers beyond the Shire's borders than wire-worms in the carrot patch; trolls alone would straighten a hobbit's foot hair. He had pondered their nature more often than he cared to admit, for if he were high as a house he wouldn't need a ladder to prune the wisteria. He had tried stretching exercises and herbal salves, but he remained a sturdy three foot four inches.

"You're right, of course." Frodo sighed as if there were days when he would just as soon pass on the burden of mastering Bag End to the S-Bs. "The parlour will require a coat of paint and the -- "

"I'll place an order at Wilcome's for two gallons of ochre white or you can take the pony and cart to Frogmorton and fetch them yourself." Sam calculated the distance from the arbour to the smial and jotted down a figure with his wax pencil. He would need six flats of marigolds and three of purple lobelia. At one penny a flat that would come to -- He scratched his head.

"-- horsehair sofa would benefit from a new fringe and tassels. Fetch them myself?" Frodo looked at Sam uncertainly. "Why?"

Nine pennies.

Sam stuck his pencil behind his left ear and pursed his lips. Perhaps it would rain later this afternoon. He had better nip along to the potting shed or he'd be caught with his drawers down.

"Wilcome sends the waggon to town once a fortnight. You've missed it." He edged away while Frodo was examining the smial top for subsidence. "I can't ride to Frogmorton nor paint the parlour before I go on holiday. You'll have to wait, sir, or get out your smock and brushes. And don't bother with the chimneys. Old Noakes repointed them last summer."

Frodo's monthly inspection of the estate generally involved copious quantities of tea, ancient maps, plans of the garden, a notebook, and a stout metal-shod staff. Under normal circumstances, Sam walked behind carrying an umbrella (if it was raining) and the measuring stick (if it was not) while Frodo took notes in his meticulous handwriting. This morning, however, Sam had duties which the unexpected dry weather had made imperative and Frodo was forced to carry his own stick.

"Holiday?" said Frodo, testing the word. "I had no idea. Do you make a habit of it?"

"Not a habit, sir, no." Sam pulled a length of twine, a leather glove, and a dried sprout from his pocket, but there was no leek dibber to be found. "I knew I'd want it if I hadn't got it."

Frodo stared at the sprout.

"A hobbit accustomed to vicissitudes is not easily dejected, as Cousin Bilbo used to say, although his familiarity with vicissitudes was long ago and his life since then a steady pursuit of pleasure, if entertaining youngsters from Tuckborough and Brandy Hall can be deemed a pleasure."

He unfolded his measuring stick and held it across the path.

"Gravel, I think. What haven't you got?"

"My dibber. The leeks want planting and I -- "

"Have very little time for the garden before you go on holiday. So you mentioned." Frodo studied Sam as if he wasn't sure who this strange lad in the green worsted breeches could be. "Why haven't I noticed you going on holiday?"

"I can't tell, sir. We've journeyed to Gammidge for the Gathering since I was in swaddling clouts. Nan Gamgee -- Roper Gamgee's widow that is -- was a stickler for attendance. Uncle Andy used to call her --"

Frodo put up a hand.

"The 'Gathering'?"

"That's what we name it, on account o' the numbers." Sam threw the sprout into the shrubbery and drew on his glove. "As I was saying, Uncle Andy didn't get on with Nan. He favoured Roper in looks and temperament, but he never learned to bend his neck. Nan wanted him to go as 'prentice to Holman Greenhand, 'cept Andy was a Gamgee born and it was Dad who had the touch with growing things that came to us through Nanny Rowan."

"What did he call her?"

"Who, sir?" Sam gazed at the bit of twine, then wound it into a ball the size of a conker and slipped it into his breast pocket. "Our Dad?"

The measuring stick quivered. 'T'would be a shame, Sam thought, if it fell into the muck so early in the day. Last inspection month it had flown over the midden after an unfortunate encounter with a hornet and the posthobbit had arrived on the doorstep to the sound of Frodo swearing like a Bucklander. Sam lifted his arm to catch it in case his master's grip faltered.

"You said that Andwise had an epithet for your Grandmother Gamgee."

"Oh, aye." Sam chuckled. "I'd best not utter it though. Dad would give me a wallop if I spoke ill of the dead within earshot of Number 3."

Frodo set his stick and other appurtenances on the step and folded his arms as if he were prepared to make an issue of Sam's familial squabbles.

"Correct me if I err," he began, his eyes glazing over as he contemplated the furthest reaches of Sam's lineage. "Nan Gamgee, otherwise known as Mistress Roper Gamgee, required your attendance at a festivity in Gamwich even when you were too young to know the meaning of solid food. However, since your grandmother has passed on, I take it--?"

Sam nodded, sidling nearer to the potting shed. He would have been happy to explain the intricate negotiations involved in getting every last Gamgee to Gammidge and back once a year, but he had been kept indoors by inclemencies in the weather for three days running and the garden was a shrew's nest.

"She had a seizure at the well and Auntie May, who would have married Dudo Baggins if Nan hadn't objected, was touched in the head as a consequence. They closed the well and no one lives in Gammidge now except for Wiseman's great-nephew, Harding."

Frodo looked as if he wished to sit down, but he contented himself with tapping his fingers on the sleeve of his well-tailored jacket. Superfine wool. Two silver pennies a yard.

"She _fell into the well_?"

"Straight in and was drownded. Auntie May was hard by with a load of washing in her arms. She hasn't been the same since, and won't go near standing water."

"Goodness." Frodo shuddered. "I didn't know that your family tree was fraught with incident; there's not a Baggins born who hasn't died safely in his bed, Bilbo's disappearance notwithstanding nor my own father's unseemly demise. But as I was saying before you interrupted -- Your grandmother has passed on, and in a way which can leave no doubt in anyone's mind; why should it matter now that she was a stickler for attendance?"

If the leek seedlings had to wait until Mr. Frodo slaked his curiosity they'd be kith and kin to the shrivelled sprout in no time. Sam supposed that he oughtn't to have mentioned Nan Gamgee, but she had a way of popping up in a conversation that --

"You asked me --" Sam clutched his pencil to steady his nerves; it wasn't as stout as the dibber, but it would serve. "You said you hadn't noticed me going on holiday afore, and I said I must have done whether you noticed or not 'cos Nan was a stickler. I can't say why it should matter, but habits are cobwebs at first and cables at last, as Uncle Andy was wont to declare whenever he looked at Nan. If there was a hobbit who knew about ropes and bindings --"

"It was your Nan. Yes, I see." Frodo dismissed further explanation with a wave of his hand. "I'm still in the dark. What is the nature of this 'Gathering'? Is it a fiddling competition? Group sheaf tossing?"

"Don't Bucklanders have Gatherings?" said Sam, astonished that a gentlehobbit whose family had lived in the Westfarthing time out of mind could be unaware of his neighbour's doings to such an extent. Maybe if Frodo hadn't been a staunch patron of the _Green Dragon_ he might have caught a whiff of gossip from the oldsters who sunned themselves at the door of the _Ivy Bush_. One gaffer had been heard to remark that a waggon's worth of Gamgees heading westwards every Thrimmidge with a gaggle of Cottons in tow well nigh cleared the district. But what if Mr. Frodo's ignorance were the effect of too many books and buttered scones on a lad already prone to solitary introspection? Sam frowned. A broth of sorrel, plantain and chickweed would --

"I haven't the foggiest," said Frodo, glancing at his stick. It was a splendid stick, with brass joints and end tips. Sam felt a twinge of discomfort at sight of it leaning casually by the step.

"I suppose," he said, one eye on the potting shed, "they needn't _gather_ if they live at the Hall. There must be a frightful crowd in the Great Dining Room of a Highday though. Plenty of games and high jinks, too, I shouldn't wonder, if the others resemble Mr. Merry."

"They don't all live --" Frodo's gaze followed Sam's towards the shed and his voice wavered. There was a moment's silence as master and gardener admired Bag End's most prominent outbuilding.

"How many hobbits could squeeze inside, at a guess?" Sam was fond of games, and the shed was perfectly suited to the sort of lark the village tweens had played at Overlithe till Jolly Cotton perched his backside on a pitchfork one fateful night and their dads had put a stop to it. Since then it had been naught but Boggle-about-stack, winter and summer. "It's near as big as --"

He bit his lip lest the deepest secret of the Gammidge festivities be mistakenly uncovered in the presence of an incomer, even one who was a Baggins born and bred. As the Gaffer had warned him often and often, a fellow couldn't be too careful where family matters were concerned.

"Sam?"

It would rain by tea-time and the list of chores had grown no shorter with the passing hours. He had lingered on the footpath blathering to gentry while clouds formed over the White Downs, their tails lifted like a husk of coneys at sport, and now he was trembling on the verge of an indiscretion. He turned up his collar and the words he had almost spoken fell away.

"-- Farmer Proudfoot's byre," he finished, his face guileless.

"Hardly," Frodo said. "But if I may continue -- not all Bucklanders live at the Hall; if they did, they would find themselves on very short commons indeed. I presume your Gathering consists of--"

"-- every Greenhand, Gamgee, Roper, and Cotton met together in our ancestral birthplace," said Sam, who had gradually attained the ornamental outcropping of field stones by the perennial border before Frodo was able to withdraw his attention from the ill-fated Gammidgey forebears long enough to notice the distance that yawned between them. "I'd rather it were held at the _Floating Log_, where the ale is passable."

"How extraordinary," Frodo answered, hurrying to catch him up. "I have just one question."

"Yes, sir?" Sam set his hand to the latch of the potting shed door though his heart misgave him something fierce.

"Half inch gravel or one inch?"

"Half inch," said Sam, relieved that Frodo wasn't disposed to demand more than was fitting, for the sheaf toss and the fiddles were the least of it. "I can't see to the path neither until I come back from Gammidge."

He raised the latch to end their talk and greeted his tools with a respectful nod before shrugging off his knapsack and loosening the ragged drawstring. The shed smelled of damp earth, wood, and chicken muck, and there in one corner was the three-legged stool with the row of hooks above it for his potato riddler, raincoat, and summer gardening hat. The spider sat in its web beside the door jamb and a stack of earthenware pots stood ready near the window. Bless me, he thought, _this_ is home, not --

"You needn't do it at all, my dear," said Frodo, kicking his foot against the sill as Sam emptied his things onto the work area. "Theuderic Bracegirdle is --"

"A cack-handed fool, aye." Sam was of the opinion that if he were to give Bag End the degree of care his master required it would be to the detriment of the other gardens in his charge, but to surrender a Gamgee's time-honoured duties to a road-mending Bracegirdle was a fate not to be borne. He clucked his tongue.

"He mustn't be allowed in the garden without I have charge of him, d'ye hear?" Sam gave his master a hard stare. "I can't do it yet and that's flat, but it's a dandy notion and I'll lay the gravel as soon as may be."

He picked up the scuffle hoe and levelled it at the threshold. "You'll get a splinter in your toe if you keep on."

Frodo stepped back and his cool glance rested fleetingly on Sam, as who should say, 'I'll have a splinter in my toe if I wish', then strayed to the array of potting trowels on the wall as though he had forgotten what else he might have said about the path had he not been interrupted.

"The old place will be quieter than usual," he remarked, as if it were a matter of no consequence. "How many days will you be gone?"

Bag End was already so quiet that Sam would have thought the smial abandoned had his master not ventured out-of-doors now and then to inspect the garden and share the fruits of his reading with all and sundry. He did so more often than formerly, and if he had been content at first to be _the_ Mr. Baggins of Bag End--and legatee of Bilbo's reputed wealth, as some folk said--it was evident to any hobbit with a morsel of sense that Frodo suffered from a want of friends. The burden of Mastery at so young an age was made worse by the gaggle of striplings who hung on Frodo's coat-tails when it suited them as they had hung on his uncle's. It was a shame.

"Ten days, if I ride in the dog cart with my Gaffer," he said, attempting to rid himself of the curious proposition which had begun to take shape in his noddle as he had tucked his lunch box out of the way. "Nine if I go by shank's nag."

"Really?" Frodo fiddled with the latchstring as if he had never seen the mechanism until Sam would have laid his hand on his master's to still it had he dared.

Instead, he tugged the second glove from his pocket and eyed the hat with disfavour. Broad-brimmed straw would only tease the weather when the breeze that swirled around his ankles could draw the smudge of greyness from the Downs by elevenses if it had the cheek. Sam's list of household chores was long, but he had risen at first light to help Old Noakes with a damaged down-pipe, and the prospect of clambering into the loft at Bag End with a bulls-eye lantern because a slow drip from the ceiling had stained the cover of the estate accounts was not a pleasant one. The down-pipe had come free and dumped its load of wet leaves into Sam's outstretched arms, and doubtless he would put his foot through the softened plaster of the loft before he had stopped the leak. He would rather trim the grass-border if the rain held off and Frodo could set a pail on the study floor like common folk.

"Ah," he answered. "Dad has a bad hip, as you may know, and daren't walk farther than the _Ivy Bush_."

"Yes, I remember the bottle of liniment, but what--"

"He'd sooner go in Farmer Cotton's waggon than take our cart as he likes the fellowship, but he won't say so 'cos he don't want me wandering alone. If he rides with the others, I'll walk." Sam shook out his raincoat and draped it over the edge of the door. "The Cottons break their journey at the _Half Butt_ in Tighfield where the beer is fair to middling. I won't rattle my bones from here to Gammidge for the sake of it."

"How vexing." Frodo seemed remarkably untroubled by Sam's predicament, but _something_ was weighing on his tongue.

"Ten days at the start of the growing season?" he said at last. "Who will tend the garden?"

Sam shuffled his feet and glared at the hoe.

"Odo Proudfoot's great-nephew is a jobbing gardener. He's up to snuff and a pinch above, though I'd not trust him with the oversight of a Bracegirdle." Sam pointed his thumb towards the village. "Odo is poorly and the lad is running the poulterer's till he mends."

"I'm sorry to hear it," said Frodo, but whether he was sorry about Gaffer Proudfoot's health or sorry that his front path would be bare of gravel for a fortnight was moot. "When do you go?"

"Monday next. You'll hardly miss me."

"Monday is short notice," Frodo said absently, his fingers tightening against the iron latch.

"Not so very short." Sam balanced on the doorstep, squinting at the muddy path and the two sets of footprints marching back and forth from smial to gate. They had spent a busy morning.

"A stone path would be especially fine," he suggested, "if the Baggins' coffers can run to the expense." He pulled at his earlobe while he thought of the slate flagstones he had seen in Burrfoot's Catalogue. "Begging your pardon," he added, in case the remark had sounded insolent.

"Stone?" Frodo's lips were distracting at the best of times but irresistible when he pouted. Sam looked away.

"Aye," he said. "_A stone path, properly constructed, can turn your garden from a ho-hum collection of plants into the envy of the neighbourhood_. Or so the Catalogue would have it."

"I'll bear it in mind," answered Frodo, "although I was under the impression that my collection of plants was already the envy of the neighbourhood. No, don't protest." He brushed off Sam's declaration of steadfast devotion to Bag End's horticultural marvels with a gesture. "I'll have nothing to occupy me for the next fortnight--"

"Naught but book-learning, letter-writing, and burning dumplings to pot," Sam mumbled as he gathered his tools.

"--since I'll be at the mercy of a second-rater from Overhill. What?"

"If you'd stand aside, sir. The leeks--" For the most part, Sam was happy to lend an ear to Frodo's running commentary on the cares of his position, but anything that hindered his progress towards the kitchen garden was a hurdle to be overcome before it rained.

"Not at all." Frodo dropped the latch and held the door open. "I'll resume my tour of the grounds then, shall I?"

"I s'pose," said Sam, popping behind the shed for his barrow the moment the chance offered itself. He had again experienced an upsurge of the curious proposition and his Dad would be that put out if he heeded it.

"What's wrong?" asked Frodo, his words muffled by distance. "Stone _is_ better than gravel, isn't it? Would you prefer to measure the square footage of the area now so that I can order the slate when you're abroad or--"

"Aye, 'tis. And no --" Sam jerked the tarp from the barrow and lay the scuffle hoe inside. "I haven't time, as I keep telling you."

Sam knew that his manner was testy, and that it was no one's fault but his own if he had misplaced the dibber. Yet he was also chafed by an unconscionable desire to remove his jacket while the sun was out in spite of the Gaffer's instructions on proper dress. Frodo had never shown the slightest awareness of Sam's clothes nor his politely bared head, and his readiness to doff his own togs was well-known in Hobbiton. There was no reason why Sam shouldn't expose his shirtsleeves as long as the Gaffer wasn't by, but the idea gave him the colly-wobbles. A plump sausage pasty would settle things down, as it did whenever Tom Cotton mentioned Rosie and wedlock in the same breath. In fact, Sam's belly was growing rounder due to the number of times May's pasties had been called into service since Yule. He looked at his breadbasket.

"Would you trust me to measure it?" said Frodo, peering around the corner of the shed with a woeful expression which belied the tartness of his tone.

"Measure it?" echoed Sam, hoping that he might have an opportunity to remove his jacket soonish rather than laterish.

"The path," replied Frodo. "What else should I measure? My stick is--"

"Waiting on the step," said Sam, a mite crestfallen. He plucked the wax pencil from its hiding place and reflected on his choices. _Sun won't fade it and rain won't wash it away_, Master Burfoot had said when six hard-earned pennies had been handed over and the new Shire-made mechanical wax pencil lay in Sam's pocket, wrapped in a slip of brown paper tied with string. And so it had proven.

"Maybe I'm daft--" he said with a silent apology to his Gaffer, but if he was headed towards the ditch he might as well try for the duck pond.

"No, you're quite right," Frodo interjected. "I left it there when your story of Mistress Roper Gamgee was nearing its culmination."

"So you did, but I meant--" Sam took a deep breath and finished quickly, "You could walk along o' me."

"Oh." Frodo started and his eyes fell to Sam's pencil. "I thought you planned to tally the bedding plants while I examined the cistern. I can't imagine what possible use I could be to you in the garden."

Sam groaned inwardly. A wiser hobbit would have taken advantage of Frodo's puzzlement and stifled the urge to make his meaning clear, but as the Gaffer was fond of remarking, Sam was not that hobbit.

"You could walk with me to Gammidge, if you'd a mind," he murmured, glancing up through his fringe with the air of one whose days in regular employment were numbered.

The furtive winks which accompanied rumours of Frodo's rambles in pursuit of elves were proof that respect for the Master's dignity counted for little at the _Green Dragon_, but Sam had unbounded trust in his master's tales and kept his own counsel. A journey across the western reaches of the Shire would be a wondrous thing, if his master could only be content with plain hobbit company.

"My dear chap," said Frodo, just as Sam was beginning to regret the offer, "I'm a Baggins born and bred. What would your Gaffer think?"

Sam didn't care tuppence what his Gaffer thought, though he would march through the Wednesday market stark naked rather than admit to such a wayward opinion. A fellow of two and twenty could admire a lad as feisty and outspoken as Mr. Frodo without his Dad's say-so, and if that same lad also sported a well-turned calf then it was no wonder the admiration could easily--

"I can't tell," Sam managed, grasping the barrow-handles with fingers gone white from the imprint of his pencil. Dad expected everyone to mind his place, whether he was an antique gentlehobbit who had buggered off across the Brandywine River or a nobody like Sam who feared to get above his station. The Gaffer's views on the subject of Frodo's presence in their midst would be expressed in no uncertain terms at the supper table that evening and again at first breakfast, if Sam knew how many blue beans made five. Frodo's face was hard to read since the barrow was engrossing so much of Sam's attention, but he was clearly not in the least offended by the proposal, and if he hadn't said 'what a top-hole idea, Sam', neither had he said 'no'. Things were looking up.

Sam pushed the wheel over the lip of the path and trundled his load to the front of the shed with a lighter step. Not even the ragging he would undergo once his sisters caught wind of the arrangement could entirely quell the hum which rose in his breast.

"You mayn't be a Gamgee," he said, glancing back to see whether Frodo had followed him doorwards, "but unless I'm mistaken you've a Cotton in your family tree. Most folk do hereabouts."

Sam was intent on his work now that Frodo had failed to raise any serious objections, and when the day's meals -- from the onion scones enclosed in a frayed scrap of linen to the oatcakes with cheese and bacon -- had been arranged on the table in the shed, he would buckle down to the rest of the morning's chores and let his master ponder their ancestry in peace.

"You astonish me," said Frodo, watching from the doorway. "There's nothing in the Baggins records to indicate a--"

"Byblow," said Sam.

"-- an irregular connexion."

"Old Cottar had offspring on both sides of the blanket." Sam gazed at the leeks on the window ledge and considered the likelihood of finding his dibber if he turned out his pockets a second time. It might have slipped into the lining of his jacket. He hoisted a tray. "Longo Baggins was--"

"A distant relation." Frodo stood to one side as Sam came out of the shed with his arms full and laid the seed trays in the barrow. "I'll study Bilbo's personal records while you search for your what-do-you-call-it."

Sam straightened, the oak handles warm on his palms as he rolled the barrow in a half-circle to face the kitchen garden.

"The estate inspection --" he began, but his master had returned to his measuring stick and was tucking the maps and plans into his satchel.

"I'll replace Balbo's picture once the walls have been painted," said Frodo. "_The Hill at Midsummer_ is a trifle frowsty from the loft but it's a cut above the usual Baggins bric-a-brac. I wish Bilbo had given the oliphaunt's-foot stand to Adelard as well as the umbrella. I nearly dropped the stand through the passage ceiling yesterday."

Sam had been sowing radishes the previous afternoon when a terrible uproar had fallen upon his ears from the roof vent. The odds of Frodo coming to grief in his own smial were scarcely worth the interest of a serious betting hobbit, and Sam had continued to press the fine soil over the tiny brown seeds. He frowned.

"You should have called me, sir. Those pine floorboards are dodgy. Mr. Bilbo let the smial go to wrack and ruin in his latter years, if you don't mind --"

Frodo snorted.

"I never mind. You've been 'in and out of Bag End' since you were a nipper." His eyes wandered to the low, irregular wall of the south front and narrowed thoughtfully. "I fear the inspection will be shorter than usual; I ought to make a packing list. The path will have to wait on the weather in any case and I'm well aware that we need to repair the cistern."

"A packing list?" Sam's brows rose into his hair.

"Yes," said Frodo. "A packing list. String, a card of buttons, two haporth of boiled sweets.... I'll be out of my element, of course; a mere stranger in your midst--"

He paused expectantly.

"Oh, no, sir, not once you've--" Sam was unable to complete the sentence due to the sudden realisation that even though his vow of secrecy might be broken in this instance, the obligation to spare his master's blushes remained.

"Yes?"

"-- met the lads," Sam concluded, lifting the barrow and hastening towards the back garden before the gathering clouds left them hock deep in water. He stopped to contemplate Frodo's kit. "I mustn't lollygag all day, but if you need help with t'other end of that measuring stick--"

"Are you sure?" Frodo sidled across to the barrow and nudged a seedling that had crumpled sideways against its fellows. "Spindly beggars."

"Aye," said Sam, eager to get on with the job of grubbing and planting if only Frodo would leave off blocking the track to the vegetable patch, "but I can't swear to it. I'll be stuck in amongst these leeks the minute I find my dibber."

"Uncomfortable position," said Frodo. "However, I was alluding to the festivities in Gamwich. My stick will return to the study for now."

"I--" Sam tried vainly to swallow the lump in his throat. If the Gaffer were to find out that his youngest son's importunate offer had upset the order of things at Bag End, he might pack Sam off to the Northfarthing post-haste.

"Steady on." Frodo clapped Sam's back in an affable manner, his hand lingering on the worn twill. "I'd stay behind rather than put you to any bother, as I hope you know."

"If I have to listen to my sisters natter from here to yon," said Sam in a small voice, "I'll go off the hooks."

"I was spared the burden of sisters," replied Frodo, "but Aunt Dora Baggins has done her best to make up for it." He glanced at his watch. "I want to consult _Mushrooms of the Westfarthing_ and prepare a route map; I'd hate to miss the sights through lack of planning. Perhaps we could discuss it later over a cup of tea?"

Although Sam was unfamiliar with any sights worth mentioning between Bywater and Gammidge, he wasn't averse to a hot beverage at fourses. If he could prevent his master from straying into Rushock Bog in search of puffballs, he would endure any number of unnecessary diversions.

"Happen we might, if --"

"-- you get those blasted leeks in the ground before it rains." Frodo buckled his satchel, and drew the strap across his shoulder. "I have the distinct impression that you think me unmindful of your work."

"No, sir," said Sam, who had noticed the slim figure at the window on several occasions in recent weeks but was too polite to remark on it. "If you'll let me eat my slice of lardy cake in the kitchen... A fellow has to maintain his strength."

"By all means," said Frodo, looking at Sam's dirty bare legs, his patched breeches and straining weskit. "You may eat whatever you fancy in my kitchen."

He smiled, his dark eyes warm.

"Ah," said Sam. He hoisted the barrow a little higher. "Thankee, Mr. Frodo."

"No. Thank _you_, Sam. This journey will be the perfect distraction from the cares of a shabby genteel landlord." He turned to the door. "Come in at four unless I call you first."

Sam would have assured his master that no one who bought his clothing from the gentlehobbit's outfitters in Michel Delving could be regarded as 'shabby', but Frodo's attention was bent on his measuring stick and Sam resigned himself to the day's work without further ado.


	2. In Which Frodo Does Laundry

The weather showed every sign of holding fair, and when the dibber made its appearance at second breakfast, nestled athwart the sausage pasty and a bottle of small beer, Sam gave it a severe reprimand and proceeded to acquaint it with the leeks. As he planted the seedlings in long rows between the onions and the broad beans, he paused now and again to study the sky and consider the ways in which he and Frodo could liven up the journey from Hobbiton to Gammidge. If he had read his master aright, there would be scant objection to a shared blanket during the colder nights, and although it was doubtful whether Frodo would allow Sam to take his measure on the open ground this side of Tighfield, he might overlook a friendly arm around his middle, at least on the first occasion. On the other hand, if Sam were mistaken about Frodo's interest, he would find himself without a position or relegated to the Widow's garden for the summer months. The notion that he might spend the season staring up at Bag End from the top of Bagshot Row was more than he could bear.

He shoved the dibber into his tool belt and frowned at the leeks. He wasn't over fond of the flavour, but Mr. Bilbo's prize blanch leeks were second only to taters in the Gaffer's heart. Nine inches round and eighteen to the button they'd been last year, thanks in no small part to Sam's skill at collaring. _Length without girth is no use at all _ as his Dad would --

"Pig's foot," said Sam, whose whistle was so dry after an hour's labour that the image of a stout leek in a cardboard collar made his throat close. _Mushrooms of the Westfarthing_, a copy of which had been left for him by Bilbo with the understanding that he would expand the cultivation of the higher fungi at Bag End, could surely be brought to bear upon the situation. A short walk through Tup Hag Wood in search of Slippery Jacks and a brief lesson on their merits would turn the ramble westwards into an opportunity for similar instruction at every wayside marker and watering-place.

His gaze drifted to the slumped form of the canvas knapsack which rested in the shadow behind the potting shed door and his thoughts to the stuffed spring merkel wrapped in a square of butcher's paper. Half ten was near enough to elevenses by hobbit reckoning and a quick consultation with his belly convinced him that a smatch of something now wouldn't go amiss. While it was true that his chores at Bag End would proceed with greater dispatch were he not bound by Shire custom to stop seven times a day for drink and vittles, the unavoidable meals gave him an excuse to sit by the porch in the hope of a chance encounter with his master. For once in a long while, usually when the weather was inclement, Frodo would invite him into the smial to share a pot of tea and a morsel of conversation. And somehow, even with these pleasant interruptions, and the less welcome but more frequent ones from the Gaffer, Sam found time to complete his round of seasonal work. The small matter of needing to be fed was thus not worth a moment's concern; the leeks would be in the ground by week's end and the soil turned in preparation for the seedling tomatoes. He would plant them out in a fortnight if he still had gainful employment at Bag End.

On this particular morning, the leeward side of the garden shed, warmed as it was by the unexpected sunshine and sheltered from prevailing winds, was a more comfortable spot than the kitchen entrance to ponder their expedition to Gammidge. The means by which he might describe the nature of the Gamgee customs without placing himself in an unfavourable light was much on his mind, as was the scolding he would receive when news of his impertinence reached Number 3. He was all too aware, despite his protestations to Frodo, that no amount of effort could shake a Cotton byblow from the Baggins family tree; not even the Gaffer would believe it.

As a result of his wool-gathering and the considerable allure of the bacon-stuffed mushroom, Sam neither saw nor sought any sign of his master during the course of elevenses. However, it seemed that Frodo had found cause to sally forth on a sudden errand in spite of his maps and lists, for at twenty to the hour Sam's daydream was broken by the irritable rasp of unoiled hinges and the subsequent clatter of the garden gate. He sprang to his feet with the last fragments of the merkel clutched between his fingers and watched with interest as the mop of unruly curls made its way across the party field towards Bagshot Row. Since Gaffer Gamgee was no doubt immersed in a game of darts at the _Ivy Bush_, Frodo could do little damage in that quarter, but a tremor of misgiving shook Sam nonetheless. If his master were to come upon May in high dudgeon --

"Buggerlugs," he muttered, for lack of a stronger oath to express his dismay. "That's torn it."

His solitary appraisal of a first class merkel having been spoiled willy-nilly, he folded the scrap of brown paper into his knapsack, brushed the crumbs from his breeches, and returned to the leek rows in anticipation of an early lunch. By noontide he had hoed off the weeds, lifted the daffodils, made a beginning on the nasturtians, and was ready for a generous meal of cold baked beans and barley bread when he noticed that a great gust of steam was pouring from the kitchen vent to a degree quite beyond his power to explain. He wondered if Frodo had left the copper to heat in his absence, and as he paused to stare at this anomaly, leaning on his hoe in the shade of the wisteria, the hobbit in question appeared from the lane with a bulky parcel beneath his arm and a pained expression pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Tea," said Frodo and, with a nod at Sam who stood half-hidden by the drooping branches, vanished in the direction of the kitchen entrance.

Sam had planned to eat his lunch, and his lardy cake too, prior to tackling the subject of mushroom-gathering in Tup Hag Wood. The prospect of working until fourses with no more than a cup of tea in his stomach was so dismal that he spent ten minutes pulling groundsel from the north border before he could bring himself to consider whether his master had indeed meant him to forego his bread and beans in favour of tea in the smial. Perhaps Frodo's mention of 'tea' had been a simple observation of the kind one might make about the weather. _'Parky morning, sir, if I may venture an opinion.' 'You're always venturing opinions, Sam. Tea, I think.'_

Mr. Bilbo's days had been punctuated by lashings of milky tea and his nephew had acquired the habit, although Sam had a preference for Thistletoe's stout when he could get it. It was also possible that Frodo's invitation to eat whatever he fancied in the kitchen had implied something else altogether, because Sam thought -- he thought --

"Sam?"

He dropped the weeder into his bucket and glanced back in what he trusted was a deferential manner worthy of the Gaffer.

"Aye, sir?"

Frodo looked as if he had been in a dog hotter, or would have done had there been any dogs hereabouts. He was a trifle pasty around the eyes and his hair lay in tight ringlets against his shirt collar. He had doffed his jacket, his weskit was unbuttoned, and there was a smear of white powder on his wrist.

"Would you step inside?" he said, gripping the door frame as though his knees were about to give out. "I hate to be a nuisance, but I need a second pair of hands and possibly a mop. Do you remember that nursery tale of the wizard's apprentice? I leave the smial for _five minutes_ \-- "

"The grass wants a trim," said Sam, unwilling to be hasty when the slant of early afternoon light on his master's bared throat was so sweet to the eyes. "My Gaffer would thrash me if --"

"Master Hamfast has never laid a finger on you." Frodo assessed the garden with an expertise born of long acquaintance. "The grass won't march down the Hill until tomorrow but the kitchen is awash with laundry _at this very moment._ Sam?"

"Our Mari --" Sam began, aware that Frodo had a disinclination to household chores of the more homely sort and that, left to his own devices, he would drag about the smial all day in a mended nightshirt rather than boil his own linens.

"I asked Marigold if she could do my things before Monday and she said: _'Naw, it's snarly t'day, sir, and ah's that badly. I can tak nowt.'_ Did she -- ?"

"She meant 'no', Mr. Frodo, and she won't do them tomorrow neither. It's bad luck to launder on a Friday. Rose Greenhand, who was Tom Cotton's great-grandmother and aunt to Old Holman, washed on a Friday and was swept downstream one spring when The Water was in full spate."

Frodo raised an eyebrow. "Your family is prone to mishap. Is it safe to journey with you?"

"Safe as smials," said Sam, striking the dirt from his gloves and shoving them into a back pocket. "I take after my mam."

"_Fair as a lily_, according to Bilbo, who wasn't given to hyperbole. Be that as it may --" he continued, as Sam hid his blushes behind the purple buddleia, "-- in the absence of a decent laundress, two hundred handkerchiefs and several pairs of clean cuffs is reasonable for a nine day outing, wouldn't you say? Bilbo forgot his handkerchief and would have gone without if it hadn't been for Gandalf's presence of mind."

"It was a rum go," said Sam, quite certain that Gandalf's presence of mind would never have extended to such an immense load of personal items. "My lunch -- "

"It's too early for lunch," said Frodo, turning into the smial. "We'll have a cup of tea once you've sorted the laundry. Do come in."

"Lumme," muttered Sam, shocked by this ready dismissal of food. His knowledge of wash-day was limited to the fetching of water in quantity, but he could scarce admit to his dearth of experience in the face of Frodo's need for assistance. The scent of wet linen had become so marked that it was evident a good ten paces from the front door. "Tea --"

"-- will be just the ticket when we're done," replied Frodo. He gestured at the basin of warm water in the porch. "If you'd leave off holding that bucketful of weeds and wipe your feet -- "

"Aye, sir," said Sam, flicking the groundsel from his toes and setting the pail aside. "If it's all the same, I'll hang my hat on the coat peg next to yours. Halfred left his cap by the runner bean frame and an earwig -- "

"I'm sure it did," said Frodo, hastening down the passage while Sam followed shortly after in a flurry of damp footprints. The kitchen was as neat as ninepence and by no means awash, although Frodo had thrown his jacket on the settle and there was a pair of tongs below the table.

"I might have used too much soap." Frodo tilted his head towards the range and Sam leaned forward to inspect the tangle of lawn handkerchiefs and shirt cuffs swirling fitfully in the copper. "What do you think?"

Sam was disinclined to giving his opinion on domestic matters even when expressly called upon as he seldom ventured into the wash-house at Number 3 and had scant knowledge of soap, dolly pegs, or ironing boards, but he knew that if there was a gift to the boiling of nose-wipers it hadn't been bestowed on Frodo.

"Maybe you should give 'em a rinse," he offered. "They reek summat awful."

Frodo sighed. "That much is obvious. I borrowed a cup of lavender powder from the Widow Rumble and my kitchen smells like a knocking shop. As will I, if these handkerchiefs travel to Gamwich and back in my knapsack."

"Never," objected Sam, his ear tips suffused with warmth on his master's behalf. "An afternoon stretched flat on the privet should do the trick. Or I could take them home tonight and peg them on the washing line."

The sight of two hundred handkerchiefs in the garden at Number 3 would raise some concerns in Hobbiton and Bywater over the master's health but no one would find it strange that a Baggins would be the owner of so many clouts.

"One must smell of _something_, I suppose," continued Frodo, casting another of those meaning looks at Sam's second best suit of clothes. "Cousin Bilbo favoured pipe smoke and mixed biscuits. If I don't take after him in that regard, to what can I aspire beyond a hint of lavender in my drawers? _Do_ I take after him?"

"You'd have to ask our Marigold, sir. I daren't offer an opinion."

His sisters had often remarked on the fine quality of the master's linens but had said nothing of their smell; it would have been unseemly. Nevertheless, it was Sam's belief that not even a copper full of wet hankies or a hundredweight of washing powder could hide the spicy fragrance of sweet briar which clung to Frodo wherever he went. And if Sam were able to lure him into Tup Hag Wood at nightfall, they would be far too busy with what lay hidden in each other's drawers to worry about lavender.

"'Cept Mari suffers from catarrh," he added, his eyes on the copper but his mind on Frodo's unmentionables. "She wouldn't know your underlinens from the Widow Rumble's apron, begging your pardon."

"Catarrh might be a blessing in this case," said Frodo, picking up the tongs and directing them at the seething mass. "I've been known to have a touch of it myself when the may is in blossom. I'd rather not overburden my knapsack, but I should hate to be ten leagues from a decent haberdasher's with a runny nose and no hankie. Gamwich will have limited amenities, I expect."

Sam was content with a square of checked gingham or a bit of nappy flannel and would have been glad to share it in a pinch if only he could decide how ten square inches of homespun could be made to stand in for two hundred hand-embroidered lawn wipes.

"I daren't -- "

Frodo's lips quirked. "I might almost think you had no opinions at all except that I've heard you holding forth at the _Ivy Bush_ on the price of Longbottom Leaf and you were _quite definite_ just now about your preference for stone over gravel."

Sam stared at the murky liquid, the frill of white foam on the lip of the copper, and the linens surfacing like potato dumplings in a pot of chicken broth. He knew more about dumplings than he did about yard goods and wasn't prepared to hazard a guess on amenities no matter what the provocation. He sighed.

"Gentlehobbits' furnishings are beyond my ken, sir. The old master got there and back with less than a gross of hankies, and that's a fact."

"So he did, and loved to tell the tale again and again. The question before us," said Frodo with a flourish of the tongs, "is whether I should boil them for another ten minutes or leave you to give them a rinse in this pot of clean water while I butter some bread for our tea?

Sam shrugged. "They'll need a second rinse and a run through the mangle or they won't dry in this weather. You could hang 'em by the fire o' course but the kitchen would smell like the Gammidge sweat house and -- "

"I beg your pardon?" interrupted Frodo. "The _Gammidge sweat house_?"

"It's a figure of speech," said Sam, clearing a speck of merkel from his throat. "What they call a -- "

"_Sa-a-a-m_?"

"Didn't I tell you about our sweat house, Mr. Frodo? It's very old and Cousin Harding --"

"I don't want to hear about Harding Gammidge," said Frodo, tapping the middle button of Sam's weskit with the tongs. "Why would a hobbit walk twenty leagues to Gamwich when he can sweat in the comfort and privacy of his own house? I'm sweating enough for two and I've scarcely left the kitchen all morning. Or am I wrong in thinking that this sweat house plays a key role in your family gathering?"

"Naw," said Sam, afraid that his resolve to stay quiet had broken on the rocks of Frodo's wits and his own loose tongue. "Happen you ain't. Gammidgys live in smials like regular folk, and sweat in 'em, too, I shouldn't wonder, or would do if they hadn't moved to Tighfield a hundred years ago and become Ropers. Our sweat house has a metal furnace and benches round the --"

"Benches?" Frodo's tone was one of affected disinterest. "Would it be similar to Mistress Gildenfoot's establishment in Bywater? If so, you're wrong about its being a Gamwich custom. You see, Great-Great-Grandfather Balbo of the yellowed varnish --"

"Bless me," interjected Sam, astonished by the suggestion that Harding would have the wherewithal to handle frequent custom at his age. "Gammidge has no sporting house, nor ever did, to my knowledge. There's one in Tighfield though, with fringed settees and a ceiling lantern as big as a pumpkin. Or so the lads tell me."

He might have discovered the truth of the rumours had he been able to give his Dad the slip on their last visit to Uncle Andwise, but he had spent his days in the rope-walk with Anson and his evenings at the _Half Butt Inn_ discussing a pint pot of cider under the Gaffer's watchful eye.

"I'm stunned," said Frodo. "I'd always assumed that Westmarch hobbits were forced to make their own entertainment. This sweat house --"

"-- is a certain remedy for ague, fever, croup and the itch, according to our Halfred," finished Sam, who was content to be entertained by his master anywhere between Hobbiton and the Bounds, fringed settee or no.

"Why a sweat house in Gamwich when a cure for the itch is nearer at hand?" replied Frodo. "Aunt Dora assures me that an occasional visit to Mistress Gildenfoot's will suffice for a single hobbit of leisure, although what a spinster of five score knows of the matter is a mystery to me. I've ignored her letters because I don't -- that is to say -- " He bent his gaze to the copper. "My itch is of a different sort."

Sam tried to look sympathetic but as he had no idea how to scratch Frodo's itch without losing his position he feared that he was not altogether successful.

"The sweat house is a kind of dry bath, Mr. Frodo. There's none like it in Bywater, nor Buckland neither if I'm not mistaken. In Wiseman's day it was a smial on the banks of the Little Trickle, with heated stones over a wood fire and no chimney. But Rose Greenhand didn't care for the smoke and -- "

"This was before she was swept downstream, I take it?"

"Aye," said Sam, frowning slightly. "Old Gammidgy -- Hob Gammidge, as he was then -- built a house with a proper furnace and it stands in Harding's back garden to this day, though some claim to miss the smell of the pine logs. Gaffer says such folk are cross as two sticks by nature."

"I'd just as soon walk to the _Green Dragon_ and drink a mug of best bitter with my friends when I'm in the mood for a smoke," said Frodo, inching closer to the jumble of linens. The rising steam slicked his face with moisture and twisted his dark hair into kiss curls on his forehead. He glanced at Sam. "Is lavender soap used in the sweat house?"

Sam shook his head, admiring the sparkle of water on Frodo's lashes. "No soap at all."

"What end does it serve?" asked Frodo. "A dry bath, that is, for soap undoubtedly serves some end and I trust that Harding is acquainted with it. I can appreciate the curative properties of steam, but I have yet to meet an ague or a fever that could resist a glass of ginger cordial and a brisk walk."

"The walk to and from the sweat house is brisk when a nor'easter is blowing," said Sam, remembering how his cods had shrivelled up at last year's get-together. "So when the eldest gaffer has prepared the whisks we --"

"Ball whisks or sauce whisks?" said Frodo as he shifted the first of the wet handkerchiefs to the cold water tub. "I'm not surprised that food would be involved at some point, but I'd recommend --"

"Neither, sir. They're made of birch twigs and lengths of twine."

"My dear Sam!" cried Frodo, dropping the tongs in his excitement. "We've been talking at cross-purposes for the past five minutes. Mistress Gildenfoot uses willow, I believe, but the principle is the same. I'd hoped that your sweat house might form part of my new book on Westfarthing customs but it's turned out to be a commonplace business after all. Gamwich, as I said earlier, is a long way to go for pleasure of that sort."

"There's no pleasure 'of that sort' to be had in the sweat house. We slap ourselves with birch twigs to make the blood rise in our -- "

Frodo snorted. "I could tell you a horrifying tale of Lotho, a willow withe, and a pot of strawberry conserve. Remind me when I've finished the laundry."

"I'd rather not hear it." Sam had enough trouble at the prospect of him and Frodo sitting cheek by cheek for half an hour without the spectre of a Sackville-Baggins coming between them. "Mr. Lotho is welcome to his amusements but you won't find any in the Gammidge sweat house. The whisks make the blood rise in our _limbs_, I meant to say; I wouldn't know of any other use."

"I stand corrected," said Frodo, a twinkle in his eyes as he returned to his work. "What happens next?"

"We sit in the altogether until someone faints from the heat," replied Sam, at a loss to explain the benefits of communal steaming to a hobbit who had been brought up at haphazard by a bachelor cousin. "'Tis fearful hot in the sweat house and if we forget ourselves in the thrill of the moment a gaffer unaccustomed to stimulation might -- "

"The thrill of a rough wooden bench should be a novel experience," said Frodo quickly. He tossed the last of the handkerchiefs into the rinse water and pouted at the unfortunate result. Sam had rarely seen so many scraps of linen crowded into such a small container; there was scarce room for the tongs.

"I mustn't neglect to take notes if I can find somewhere to keep my pencil," continued Frodo, poking idly at the laundry. "Do you carry him off once he's fainted?"

"In a manner o' speaking," said Sam, who had begun to question why his master had wanted a second pair of hands when he was as adept as any Baggins at making chit-chat while doing his own housework. "We take a plunge in the duck pond and then we broach a barrel of ale. He soon comes round."

"Thank goodness, but -- " Frodo stared at Sam as though he had only just noticed him. "Is swimming one more Gamgee custom hitherto unknown to me?"

"I said naught about swimming, Mr. Frodo. The pond is no deeper than a pig trough."

"I'm relieved to hear it. Would you mind if I mentioned your name in the acknowledgements? I fancied the title, _Natural History and Antiquities of the Westfarthing_, but you might prefer _An Excursion to Tighfield with An Account of a Curious Bathing Custom by S. Gamgee._"

"I'd as soon be nameless. My gaffer -- "

"Doubtless. But tell me if I've understood you correctly." He aimed the tongs at Sam. "Harding Gammidge has a small wooden outbuilding in his --"

"Naw. It's almost as large as Farmer Newbold's pig barn," said Sam, studying the arrangement of pans with feigned interest so that Frodo might have time to consider the magnificence of the family holdings. "There's a mort o' Gamgees in the Westfarthing."

"Harding Gammidge," said Frodo, with an aggrieved look at his soapy linens and another at Sam, "has a _remarkably capacious_ wooden building in his back garden which is used every spring to --" He paused. "What do Gamgees do the rest of the year?"

"We bathe in hot water same as normal folk."

"I should hope so. Indoor plumbing at home is worth any number of cold baths at twenty leagues distance. One is spared the inconvenience of marching to the pond like a line of cows coming in to be milked."

Sam had no familiarity with indoor plumbing and a hot bath was invariably the end result of much labour but a tin tub in the kitchen was certainly preferable to the duck pond in Gammidge.

"Not a line, sir. We form a throng and move in haste because of the cold."

"Do you, indeed? I look forward to observing what must surely be an ancient mating custom."

"Mating custom?" Sam hadn't thought of it in that light although he had already decided that if he and his master failed at an understanding before they reached Gammidge, the sweat house would provide a splendid opportunity for Frodo to see the ample goods he had on offer. "Who would have hankered after Wiseman Gamwich?"

"I said nothing whatsoever about Wiseman," snapped Frodo, "but as you're here in my kitchen he was clearly the apple of _someone's_ eye. Why else would your family pursue such a tiresome custom unless it served a useful purpose?"

Sam nodded.

"I reckon it does, but the sweat house isn't as popular as it once was since Wending, who was a grandson of Wiseman's brother, Hoarfoot, was taken by a fit of the ague when he argued with Frollo Brown at the door of the changing room. Arguments are frowned on because -- " He bit his lip and silently hummed a few bars of _The Bonny Hawthorn_ to clear his head. "-- because Harding won't have it."

"Neither would I. The scuffle with Sancho Proudfoot caused considerable damage to my pantry; the plaster still hasn't been repaired. I can only imagine what it must be like to have a horde of Gamgees and Cottons fighting in the back garden."

"Aye, well --" Sam had never fought in the garden but he had tussled with Halfred in the kitchen at Number 3 on more than one occasion. A friendly scrap between kin was nothing like the unseemly carryings-on after the Party. "Wending was accursed for his bickering ways and Frollo caught the mump from a nevvy and died last winter."

"I'm sorry to hear it," said Frodo, "although it's hardly surprising that a hobbit would catch the ague while standing naked in a chicken yard. That aside, why is the sweat house less popular since Wending and Frollo squabbled?"

"Folk were slow to believe in the curse till Wending was struck down on the threshold. No one wants to share a harsh word now lest --"

"Oh come, my dear Sam!" cried Frodo, lowering the tongs and turning his attention to the wash. "That's laying it on a bit thick. Why would anyone be cursed for a disagreement? And why, more to the point, didn't you tell me to use a larger tub for my hankies?"

"You didn't ask," said Sam, bending over to examine the motley assortment. He had as little skill with fine linen as with laundry soap but he was pleased to have their conversation take a different course; if he were to flout the Gaffer's need for secrecy twice in one day he would pay the fiddler at supper. "Besides, I was knee-deep in nasturtians."

"I suppose you were." Frodo drew a cuff from the mixture and let it spin idly for a moment before dropping it back into the basin. "Doesn't Marigold add something to the water?"

"Gammer Birtwhistle's Bluing," said Sam, watching a bead of grey froth soak into the quarry tiles. He rubbed at it with his toe. "It'll take more than one rinse and a bag of smalt to whiten that lot."

"I fear you're right," replied Frodo. "I may have to muddle along with yellowed cuffs and dirty handkerchiefs. Do we have any bluing?"

"I don't know, sir." Sam was on intimate terms with the garden shed and the beer cellar but he was unfamiliar with the contents of the storage pantries. It was likely that old Mr. Bilbo had amassed a great number of peculiar things, but where they might be found was another matter. "I'll have a look for it when I fetch the big wash tub. Where -- ?"

Frodo flung the tongs onto the sideboard and collapsed into his chair with a despairing moan. "I could be wrong, but the bay laurel by the kitchen door appears to be using it as a planter."

"So it does," said Sam, who had seen his Gaffer prune the tree last autumn. He patted Frodo on the shoulder and hastily stepped towards the door. "Why don't I run home and borrow one from Marigold? I won't be a jiffy."

She would give him an earful about gentlehobbits who laundered on a Friday and before the night was out every lass in Hobbiton would know that Mr. Frodo Baggins was a-walking to Gammidge with young Samwise the gardener.

"Why was he angry in the changing room?" asked Frodo, remembering his place in their talk as he rose again to put the kettle on the hob. He took a pair of napkins from the dresser and began to set the table as Sam had seen him do many times when Bilbo was at home.

"Frollo Brown was second cousin to Mistress Cotton and not a Gamgee in any wise," said Sam. "When he shoved ahead of the others in the porch, he was told by Wending to mend his manners. Oaths were uttered and they'd have come to blows 'cept Harding told them --"

" -- he wouldn't have it." Frodo grimaced. "Harding and I will not be the best of friends, I fear. Will he object to my presence?"

"My Gaffer won't hear aught spoken against a Baggins of Bag End. You can't help not being a Gamgee, if you don't mind me saying so."

"Not at all," said Frodo. "I might be able to produce a spurious Gamgee ancestor, but from what you've said I suspect that Harding would notice the counterfeit." He pointed to the rinse tub. "On the whole, I'd rather he noticed my ancestry than my linens."

"The hankies will be right as rain when you've ironed out the wrinkles," answered Sam. "And you won't be wearing cuffs in the sweat house. Everyone has a clean square of checked gingham to sit upon and a --"

"Quite," said Frodo, spooning a generous measure of tea into the pot and cocking his head at Sam. "But how did Harding come to be in possession of several dozen laundered tea towels if Gamwich has no amenities?"

"We bring them with us. Hand-made for the gathering by a guild of Hobbiton lasses sworn to --"

"You're pulling my leg," said Frodo. He chose a loaf from the breadbox and for a brief spell the silence was broken only by the murmur of the simmering kettle and the clink of cutlery.

"Perhaps I'll wait at the inn while you gambol in the altogether and whisk yourselves with birch twigs," he continued when the table had been laid with slices of buttered bread and a jar of gooseberry jam.

"I'm sorry," replied Sam, bidding farewell to any chance of a quiet cuppa with his master once Frodo realised that more hardship was involved in walking to Gammidge than sore feet and short commons. "There's no inn west of Tighfield. Nary a one."

"Ah," said Frodo with a remarkable degree of calm under the circumstances. "I see. So I'm to give up hope of a comfortable bed after _three days_ of traipsing through mud and bracken in exchange for the dubious pleasure of sitting naked in a ramshackle outbuilding with every Cotton, Greenhand, Roper and Gamgee between the Westmarch and the River?"

"Summat like that," muttered Sam. It sounded dafter than a bag of doorknobs when put that way but the pleasure of a snug sweat house on a frosty spring day was not to be sneezed at. "The Ropers bring tents and vittles from Tighfield. There's a bonfire with baked taters, and kissing behind the waggons, and _Suck and Blow_."

The kettle gave a shrill pop and a puff of steam issued from the spout.

"I must have misheard," said Frodo, as he poured a dollop of cream into each cup with a hand which shook a little from the unaccustomed laundering. "What did you say at the end?"

"It's a game, sir, akin to _Snapdragon_ or _Spin the Bottle_, only with a scrap of card and a powerful amount of suction. The card passes around the circle -- " Sam fished a seed packet from his waistband and held it to his lips. " -- like so, until someone lets go of it. The lass next to me -- Rose Cotton, it was -- kept dropping it a-purpose, or so Tom said. You wouldn't believe the carry-on."

"Don't be a ninnyhammer," said Frodo, staring at Sam's mouth as if he had just been struck a blow on the head. "I would have no trouble believing it."

Sam, somewhat abashed by this admission of having been gulled by a Cotton, put the seeds in his breast pocket and reached for the door handle. "My lips were chapped from the wind and I had a cramp in my left --"

"It occurs to me," said Frodo, setting his arms akimbo and facing down the laundry tub as if it were a stray mongrel which had invaded Bag End, "that the bother I've had with these blasted hankies and the sheer wretchedness of the Westmarch in mid-May will have been worth it if I can prevent Rose Cotton from causing further harm to your character."

"'Tweren't my character, Mr. Frodo, so much as my buttocks. The ground was cold as a frosted frog and by the time the sucking and blowing was done I could barely rise to my feet, I was that stiff."

"Thank you for the account," said Frodo. "I feel vastly reassured. If Marigold agrees to iron these once they've been mangled and dried on the privet, I can face whatever misery and embarrassment await us in Gamwich. What do you say?"

"Happen she will, sir, but you needn't be discomfited. If you'd rather play _Pin the Tail on the Donkey_, no one will mind. _Suck and Blow_ isn't for everyone."

"I'm all too aware of that." Frodo turned back his wilting shirtsleeves and picked up a towel to lift the kettle off the hob. "We can discuss it on the way to Gamwich. Meanwhile, there's a pot of tea to be shared and if you'd care to bring your lunch --"

"Thankee, Mr. Frodo. I'll be there and back in a trice," said Sam and, in the conviction that he had escaped the lair of a fire-drake without being singed overmuch, he hurried away to Bagshot Row.


	3. In Which Sam and the Gaffer Have Words

"The master's busy as a hen with one chick," observed Marigold, shaking out the feather bed while Sam stood in the passage with his ears cocked for the sound of footsteps. He had marked the Gaffer catching his breath beneath the chestnut blossoms in Hill Lane and unless he fled the hole before his dad turned in at the gate they would have an exchange of words. If he followed the footpath through the orchard from the bottom of Bagshot Row he could bypass the lane altogether, but should the laundry tub be spotted making its way across the party field the Gaffer would have a great deal to say about it later. Sam was caught between the runner and the bedstone, for whether it was in the garden at Number 3 or seated at the supper table next to three meddlesome sisters he would hear the Gaffer's thoughts on hobnobbing with Frodo by day's end.

"He has a head full of bees and won't rest till they've been hived," answered Sam, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other as Marigold tucked the sheet under and plumped the goose down pillows. "The kitchen walls are asweat with steam, the smial reeks of lavender, and he's up to his lug-holes in sodden handkerchiefs."

Marigold tut-tutted as if she disapproved of Frodo's inability to do his own washing and would take pleasure at the sight of wrinkled cuffs and yellow hankies. Lasses could be hard as hammers where a fellow's bits and pieces were concerned, as Sam had discovered when the champion conker which he had left in the parlour by mistake had been thrown onto the rubbish tip without a by-your-leave.

"No doubt," she said, a smile threatening to break out in spite of her vexation. "He came by at eleven with a bundle of smallclothes and a face like a wet week. I'd swear he hasn't been in such a taking since Mr. Bilbo ran off with that wizard."

"Smallclothes?" Sam frowned. He knew every pair of breeches in his master's many wardrobes from the dark green worsted to the plum whipcord and none had been in the kitchen that afternoon except the new brown superfine which fit so admirably over Frodo's slim hips. "He said nowt to me."

"Why would he?" She picked up the counterpane and laid it atop the coarse blanket, turning the top sheet over the assembled bedclothes. "They want mending, not planting in rows. He'd have brought his wash too only I told him I couldn't do it. The cheek!"

"You fobbed him off," cried Sam in a voice made shrill by his fear of being found at home when a tray of seedlings still languished in the shed. "You told him --"

"Samwise Gamgee, listen to yourself!" She pushed the chamber pot out of sight with a toe and hung the creased flannel drawers on the footboard. Sam usually made his own bed but the sudden turn in the weather had taken him to Bag End directly after first breakfast; the covers had been left in a muddle and he had abandoned the nightshirt higgledy-piggledy in a corner. He hung his head.

"When the master wants a thing done, he can't bide until it's finished. He has me all a-quiver."

"I can see that," she continued in a more kindly tone, "but I had mattresses to air and floors to scrub and our Dad was making moan over the bent tine on his onion fork. Then May walked down to the pork butcher's for a link of sausages and Dad stormed out in a temper 'cos of --"

She jerked her head in the direction of Bag End and Sam raised his eyes to the ceiling as if Frodo's kitchen were right above them instead of two fields and the width of the garden away.

"Blow me tight," he said. "I guessed it. Did he say aught of the master before he --"

"Naw," she answered, tucking her arm in his. "He mumbled summat about 'nine inches round' and lads who were 'green as gooseberries' and was off like a flash. Come along, my dear. Least said is soonest mended."

They walked down the passage to the scullery, the cool stone pavers gleaming in the light from the open door. A mound of potatoes waited on the table for May's return and a suet pudding hissed in the copper.

"Perhaps he meant Fosco Proudfoot,” said Marigold.

"Mebbe."

She poked him in the ribs. "For all we know, he's worritin' about the garden. I'm no prattle-tale, Samwise, but if our Daisy overheard Mr. Frodo explaining why he wants ten pairs of spotless breeches by Monday --"

Sam groaned aloud. "Will you mend 'em?"

She shook her head. "He can stitch a button-hole as well as you or me. Besides, it would take a gang of lasses to keep him tidy from what I've seen."

"I reckon so," replied Sam. He would have looked after Frodo's button-holes gladly and satisfied his other needs, too, but how a vigorous lad could plant seeds both indoors and out and have time for a game of shuttlecock with his friends or a lamb chop at the _Green Dragon_ was anybody's guess.

"He wants to cut a dash at Gammidge, if I'm not mistaken. _I ought to make a packing list_, was how he put it, though it's simple enough to my way of thinking." He held up his hand. "_Four_ pairs of plain wool breeches for the journey and _one_ pair of velvet for the gathering. He'll be naked in the sweat house, as I told him earlier. Concerning weskits --"

"You _told_ him?" said Marigold, throwing her apron over her face to stifle a laugh. "Criminy."

"Not at first," said Sam, determined to make it sound as if he had planned the revelation of Gammidge mating customs during his encounter with the merkel rather than suffered Frodo to tease it from him by means of relentless questioning. "I led him there in gentle stages. Best he hears it now than finds out when Harding brandishes the whisks and we drop our trousers. Imagine the shock!"

"I'd just as soon not, and I won't share the sweat house with him neither." Marigold lowered the apron and her cheeks were scarlet. "You're a caution, Sam, but if the master can stand your high jinks I suppose the two of you will come to no harm."

She picked up the scrub brush and began to sort through the potatoes, setting the red nuggets on one side and putting the bakers in the sink. "I can't abide the thought of him in nowt but his skin," she added. "Where would I look?"

"You could look at his fresh-pressed hankie." Visions of flawless pale skin had preyed on Sam's mind since the previous summer when he had been sent to Bag End for a bottle of rheumatism salve and had spied Frodo emerging from the bath with his dressing gown open from neck to nethers. He had left in such haste that his Gaffer had been forced to go without any salve until the morning after the Party; nevertheless, there had been time between the meeting in the passage and the door of Number 3 to hum a few lines in Frodo's honour from a song made popular by Mr. Bilbo and preserved in a number of versions from Overhill to Nether Fold. Sam liked the second verse, the one that went:

_Still round the corner there may wait  
A new road or a secret gate,  
And though I pass them by today,  
Tomorrow I may come this way..._

"And if he doesn't want lasses gawping at his linens he can stay in the tent," he finished, recovering his composure with an effort. He would have no trouble deciding where to look; that one brief glimpse of Frodo in his birthday suit had provided him with months' worth of solitary pleasure.

"After a night on the ground in Harding's back pasture? Don't be daft." Marigold filled a pan with water, added the red-skinned potatoes, and placed it on the stove. "He'll be glad of the warmth and the pint of grog afterwards."

"It doesn't seem right," said Sam. He intended to make his master's nights as comfortable as possible, sharing a blanket on the journey and positioning his body between Frodo's pallet and the tent door during their time in Gammidge, but he suspected that three days of rough walking would accustom them to what Frodo called a 'lack of amenities.' Sam's bodily warmth or its absence might be of no concern to a gentlehobbit hardened by exercise. He sighed. A gardener's lot was not always a happy one.

"Don't be a pickle," replied Marigold. "If he cared aught for onlookers he wouldn't swim in The Water with a pair of skimpy underdrawers to shield him from the eyes of the village lasses. For all his fine talk, he doesn't hold himself above us."

It was true that Frodo had been unruffled by the state of his dressing gown and had merely remarked _Oh, there you are, my dear_ before Sam had turned tail and fled Bag End, and yet a bare Baggins in the midst of four score Gamgees would stand out like a daffodil in a carrot row.

"No more he does, but he needn't share our steam if it isn't to his liking. I meant to tell him as much only I let summat slip about _Suck and Blow_ and by the time I'd shown him how to hold the card it was too late. He wanted an ounce of Gammer Birtwhistle's and I --"

"_Suck and Blow._"

"Aye. Bucklanders don't play at kissing games," said Sam, although it was evident in hindsight that Frodo had never admitted to an ignorance of _Suck and Blow_ and might, if luck favoured them, be as adept at dropping the card as any Shire hobbit. "I told him of Rose Cotton's cheating ways and he was that taken aback. Then he asked if you could iron his hankies and I came away as fast as I could."

Marigold stared at him across the heap of potatoes, her expression uncommonly like the Gaffer's when he was puzzling over a new variety of tuber. "You can't help being smitten," she said at length.

"No fear!" cried Sam, glancing around to see whether May or Daisy had come in at the door. "I've planted leeks, weeded the borders, sown the nasturtians, and given him an earful of advice since first breakfast. It's enough to make a lad's head spin."

"So it is," she said, her gaze on the coils of steam which had begun to rise from the simmering potatoes. "Gammidge will be an eye-opener for some, I'll warrant. As to the rest -- " She covered the pot and turned back to Sam. "I can iron his things on Sunday forenoon if it's agreeable but mind you don’t leave any streaks in the linens."

"Not hardly." Sam understood the principle of laundry blue although he feared that its application would differ from the steeping of chicken dung. "I'd never hear the end of it."

"Then be off afore Dad gets home," said Marigold, nudging him towards the back door, "or you'll have more on your mind than a parcel of breeches."

"I do anyhow," Sam replied and left the smial in the certain knowledge that if he had escaped further questioning on matters as sensitive as Frodo's smallclothes it was by the skin of his teeth.

He was likewise aware, and in a way that lent wings to his feet as he plunged into the half-lit safety of the wash-house, that the running of domestic errands in fair weather would ill-please some folk when the garden had still to be got ready in time for the arrival of the hapless Fosco. The regulars at the _Ivy Bush_ had been heard to remark that if Frodo Baggins was unable to handle the indoor work he should hire one or two of the farm lads; he was amply supplied with Took money and could well afford it. It was perhaps no great wonder that Bungo's Folly had proven to be a white oliphaunt, for what use after all were three virgates of land, an apple orchard, a fish pond, and a rambling smial full of dusty mathoms to a pair of confirmed bachelors who lacked the will to maintain them? It was clear that the new master of Bag End was no more likely than his cousin to show a morsel of hobbit sense and it seemed unreasonable to those who made it their business that Samwise Gamgee should bear the burden of household chores for the sake of a few extra pennies on his wages. Nothing good would come of it.

Talk of this sort meant little to the Gaffer, but he had taken offence at the Miller's description of Sam as 'a pushing lad' whose head would be turned by the queer company at Bag End and had kept a sharp watch on the garden's maintenance ever since.

"It's a fine how-d'ye-do," grumbled Sam, extracting the galvanised rinse tub from its place below the sink and setting it near the door. He felt flustered rather than queer as he dumped the laundry blue into a drawstring bag and stuffed the lot into his pocket. If he had an ambition beyond the planting of hardy annuals it was not one to be spoken aloud. It was far too late in any case to prevent his head spinning round at the scent of wild roses. "And no one's never-mind neither."

He was wiping his hands on the jack-towel when he heard a shout of _How-do, Neighbour_ from Old Noakes and the unmistakeable grunt of the Gaffer's answer. There was no time to flee across the party field and no help for it now but to peer through the smudged window and wait on tenterhooks as the Gaffer unlatched the gate, bent to study the setterwort, blew his nose on a square of gingham and sank into his favourite seat with a pouch of Southern Star and an ancient briar.

It was close in the wash-house and the drowsy murmur of bees at the harebells made Sam long for a quiet spot in the shade, for the parcel of barley bread in his knapsack at Bag End, and a zesty mouthful of ginger beer. The only signs of life from the Gaffer were the fitful clenching of his hands on the smooth knob of the blackthorn stick and the swirl of blue pipe-smoke in the still air. He might never go indoors. Sam counted the flat irons on their shelf above the clothes horse, picking at a loose thread on the hem of his jacket until he had pulled it quite away. If he stayed hidden much longer, Frodo would despair of his coming and eat lunch alone while the hankies mouldered in their basin and the bread in its linen napkin; the grass would remain untrimmed and after they had finished mangling it would be too late to peg out the linens.

Blast it! He had _promised_ to be there and back in a trice. The bold-faced lad who had proffered an invitation from behind the safety of his wheelbarrow had perished from want of vittles, but the hobbit who grasped the handle of the rinse tub and stepped onto the garden path was equally heedful of his master's comfort.

"Is that you," said the Gaffer, lifting his eyes from their contemplation of the unweeded path, "or has a cloutnapper come to Hobbiton?"

"It's me," said Sam, scuffling his toes in the chickweed, "but I'm minding the master's clouts, if it's all the same."

"Didn't I hear summat at breakfast about leeks?" Gaffer Gamgee screwed up his face as if the memory pained him. "_I'll be busy as bees in a basin_ were your very words, unless my ears mistook me."

"So they were," said Sam, who had never known his dad's ears to fail him when it wasn't convenient, "and so I was, but Mr. Frodo --"

"He's a sprightly lad, ain't he," observed the Gaffer, nodding at the space beside him on the bench. Sam looked up above the undulating green rise of the smial's top as though he expected to see Frodo gazing down at Bagshot Row from the front gate, impatience writ on every feature. He put the tub by the doorstep and sat on the edge of the seat, legs stretched out to catch the sun.

"More than most," he acknowledged, meeting the Gaffer's scrutiny with a trembling in his belly. "The leeks will be planted this weekend, Dad. Fosco can't do any harm in nine days, even if Mr. Frodo is --"

_Gone to Gammidge_, he would have said but it was easier to suffer the Gaffer's questions than find words to explain how a sudden brainstorm had beset him while he pondered the merits of his mechanical wax pencil. "-- away from home."

"The master's often away," said the Gaffer, thumping the point of his stick against the bare ground so that Sam started and drew in his feet. "Bless him. Fosco Proudfoot won't sneak past the Widow's garden without he gets an earful on the trenching of leeks."

"Aye." Sam delved in his pockets and produced a small clay pipe with a painted bowl. "Poor bugger."

Gaffer Gamgee snorted. "I'll box his ears if he takes a misstep. _You mind our Sam_, I told him yesterday, _and don't go shaping the privet into any queer likeness. Mr. Baggins mayn't notice, but I will._"

Sam shrugged.

"Happen he may. I caught him in the tool shed last week having a gander at _The Gardener's Calendar of Ornamental Trees and Shrubs_. If he fancies topiary, I'll try my hand at an oliphaunt frame once I've laid the stone path."

"Ye'll scare the posthobbit," said the Gaffer, handing Sam his leather pouch of Southern Star. "Stone, eh? That green slate from Oatbarton is the finest in the Northfarthing for those with long purses."

"'Tis," replied Sam, pressing a fingerful of weed into his pipe. He had been keen to discuss the contents of Burrfoot's Catalogue before drawing up a plan for his master's inspection but the forsaken linens were proving to be a greater burden than several hundredweight of slate flags. If he could drive his father over the course to the shedding ring he might return to Bag End with a lighter heart. "Very handsome. Dad --"

He licked his lips, wondering if there was a better way to tackle the subject though he could think of none, but whatever he might have said slipped from his tongue when the Gaffer nudged him gently and crooked a finger towards Gammidge.

"I know what you mean to say."

"Ah," muttered Sam, relieved that he was to be spared the discomfort of finishing his sentence but a trifle unsettled nonetheless. "You can't pick your nose in Bagshot Row without someone telling the gossips."

"No doubt of it," answered the Gaffer, "and I dare say the Widow Rumble thought it strange when the master came tearing down hill with his parcel of laundry. Old Noakes was planting pole beans along the south wall at the time and might have died of shock if Mr. Frodo hadn't wished him good morning. What a to-do!"

"Did they --"

"Naw," said the Gaffer. "Neither on 'em. He asked my permission like a proper gentlehobbit."

Sam wasn't sure why a proper gentlehobbit would ask permission for an outing with his gardener when he was free to walk wherever he wanted. The secrets of the sweat house were in the hands of Harding Gammidge and the Gaffer had as much influence there as any other second cousin once removed -- that is, little or none. Sam considered the matter carefully while he took a second pinch of Southern Star from the pouch and packed it loosely on top of the first.

"I would have told you if -- " he began.

"If 'ifs' n' 'ands' were pots and pans," interrupted the Gaffer. He sucked on his pipestem and blew a smoke ring across the marigolds. "_No outsider has seen our doings since Holman the Elder's day_, I said. _Really?_ said he, pulling out a stub of pencil and a square of card. _Why not, Master Hamfast?_ I don't know what he had in mind for that pencil, but I met his eyes with mine. _'Cos the last outsider caused a fearsome ruction when he eloped with Rose Greenhand._."

"Oh, aye." Sam struck a spark into the tinder and lit his pipe, resigned by now to the likelihood of his missing lunch; it was probable, indeed certain, that he would hear the entire conversation between his Gaffer and Mr. Frodo for better or ill. "I know summat about it."

"A thing worth knowing is worth repeating," said the old hobbit. _"He caused a ruction on account of Farmer Tolman Cotton's grandmother and Holman took after them afore it was too late. If you take me_. The master is sharp as a needle and took my meaning straight off. _Gaffer,_ he said, eyes flashing like stars, _I can promise not to run off with one of the Gamgee lasses_. Then I --"

"O' course he did," said Sam, with a disdainful curl of his lip. "Mr. Frodo is no more apt to run off with a lass than I am to seek my bread in Buckland."

"Pshaw," retorted Gaffer Gamgee. "I know that. In and out of Bag End my foot. _I've no doubt you can, sir,_ I told him. _Master Bilbo would have done the same, bless him, for all that folk say he left Hobbiton to marry a foreigner. Can you sleep on the ground for a sennight and eat your breakfast cold?_"

"The master is as handy a lad as any you could imagine," said Sam, "and needn't go without his eggs and bacon. Why, since Mr. Bilbo went to visit the elves --"

"Passed on, you mean."

"-- he's wandered about the countryside in all weathers," finished Sam, paying no heed to the Gaffer's remark. Bilbo had been well-preserved for a hobbit of one hundred and eleven and as he had vanished once before and come back unharmed it was possible that he might do so again. "Better to suffer a hard bed in Gammidge than be shut up in Bungo's Folly with Fosco Proudfoot to tend your leeks. I dursn't think of it."

"Nor does he, if I know aught of gentlehobbits. _Sam wants my company, Master Hamfast. A cold breakfast in the wilds is a mere bagatelle when compared to my gardener's well-being._" The Gaffer waggled his head as though he had seldom heard the like. "That lad could charm the pips from an apple."

"I expect so," said Sam, taking a pull on his pipe. Frodo had failed to charm Marigold in the matter of lawn handkerchiefs and buttonless breeches but it seemed that he had cozened the Gaffer with a well-chosen sentence. "There's not many as can do it. Master Meriadoc has a quick tongue but I should be surprised if he had got round Mr. Frodo. And Miz Lobelia was no match for either on 'em when she came calling after the Party."

The Gaffer looked uncomfortable.

"Mebbe not," he said, knocking the old briar on the arm of the bench and rising to his feet, "but she nearly got round a few of the master's bits and bobs. The question is -- " He poked Sam's weskit with his pipe. "How did Mr. Frodo get round _you_?

"Me?" said Sam. He was startled by the suggestion that his offer might have been the result of any unusual persuasion. The master had dogged his heels for the best part of an hour out of curiosity at the fate of Nan Gamgee; he had grumbled about the beastly dullness of life in Hobbiton since Bilbo's disappearance; and he had stood at the door of the shed while Sam unpacked his lunch box. No, it would be quite wrong to say that Frodo had 'got round' him. There was enough work at Bag End to have kept the master busy in Sam's absence and no reason to suppose that his threat to hire Theuderic Bracegirdle had been other than a tease of the gentlest kind. "He never!"

"So I thought," said the Gaffer as he tucked away his pipe, "but you let summat else slip. He was a touch white around the gills the last I saw."

"I told him of the birch twigs, and I might have said a word or two about the duck pond," answered Sam, deeming it unwise to mention _ An Excursion to Tighfield with an Account of a Curious Bathing Custom by S. Gamgee _ or even _Mushrooms of the Westfarthing_. The Gaffer was ill at ease with book-learning and would be dismayed that his son had taken part in the morning's gossip for the sake of a place in the acknowledgements. Frodo's antiquarian interests were tolerated in the district but there would be no end of talk if he were to draw out his pencil in the sweat house.

The Gaffer nodded. "Harding is a queer old buzzard but he means well. You didn't --"

"Not yet," said Sam, as he picked up the tub and tugged on his hat brim. The breeze had risen again and the sky carried a threat of rain before nightfall. "It would knock Mr. Frodo off his pins, if I may say so. Is it settled then?"

"I s'pose. I told him, I said, _Some folk will swear it ain't done, but if you can stomach cold vittles in a tent down wind of the pig barn, you can deal with Harding Gammidge_. The master laughed fit to bust and went home with his bundle of laundry."

"Some folk will swear through a stone wall."

"You have the right of it, lad, but -- " The Gaffer tapped Sam's sleeve and lowered his voice so that Marigold, who was clattering her mop in the passage, wouldn't overhear. "If you're not careful you'll have a wet arse and no fish. Don't say I didn't warn you."


	4. In Which Frodo and Sam Set Out

"The road is a splendid thing," said Frodo, admiring the rutted track that led from his front door to the hedge at the bottom of the garden, "whether it goes on and on or merely ends at a sweat house in Gamwich. Wherever it leads, I promise to be as good a companion to you as Bilbo was to Thorin Oakenshield and his merry band."

"Ah," said Sam, who had scant use for dwarves and would rather have passed the week at Number 3 with Figwort's seed catalogue and a bag of peppermint chews. "It leads across the meadow to the Bywater Road, if I remember rightly. We ought to --"

"I'm out of shape," continued Frodo, slipping the key beneath the doorsill for the char, "but I will do my best to stay the course." He tucked a thumb into the waistband of his breeches as if the frenzy of the past few days at Bag End might have reduced his already slender middle to the width of a bulrush.

Frodo had stayed the course so well thus far that it had taken most of Sam's willpower to finish the week's chores without a rude word escaping his lips. If Frodo had stepped into the garden once to report on his progress he had done it a dozen times. He had ordered the paint, agreed with Sam that green slate would be an ideal paving material, and wondered why Bilbo hadn't thought of it in his seventy-five years as master. He had suspended the milk delivery, instructed the posthobbit to leave Aunt Dora's letters in the rhubarb forcer, and seen to the _Daily Delver_ subscription. He had dried his handkerchiefs, aired his travelling blanket, polished the knob on his stick, and mended his breeches from the vantage point of the steps. It was true that he had given as many hours to Sam's progress in the leek rows as he had to his buttons but he was as neat a seamster as Marigold had claimed and before long he had gone indoors to brew a pot of tea and left Sam to his thoughts. If anyone had suggested that Mr. Baggins was unsuited to the perils of a long expedition Sam would have split his sides with laughter.

"Thankee, sir, but we ought to take the lane from the field opposite Bagshot Row. It meets the Water just beyond the village and as my Gaffer would say, 'tis no secret when three know it." Sam scratched his head. It was a great deal more than three since he had let fall a casual remark at the _Ivy Bush_ about his arrangement with Mr. Frodo and Tom Cotton had told Charibert Bolger that some folk were twinned at the hip, sure as eggs is eggs. Sam had no qualms with regard to his cousins but he was loath to be seen by every ragamuffin in Hobbiton.

"Master Hamfast has pithy phrases for all occasions," replied Frodo as he placed a stack of copper coins on the mat in case there was postage due. "What they would call 'apothegms' in the Southfarthing. Be that as it may, I can't help but agree with him in the present instance. We should keep this venture to ourselves."

"It's not -- I mean -- " Sam feared that, though the Gaffer had spent the weekend straightening his onion fork and had said nothing further on the subject of Frodo's charms, news of the startling innovation would travel to Tighfield on the tongues of his three sisters. "The others will know afore we reach Gammidge but there's no call to go trapezing through Hobbiton with Sandyman's cur barking at our heels."

"I see," said Frodo. He fingered the gold fob which Bilbo had given him on his twenty-first birthday while his eyes followed the trace of silver winding westward below the grassy slope of the Hill. "I trust you'll have no cause to regret the invitation."

The map of Nobottle and District which Sam had spied on the kitchen table the previous day had been marked with crosses in red ink and a sizeable expanse of coloured hatching at the southernmost edge of Rushock Bog. If he had cause for regret it was that he had failed to inspect it when Frodo's back was turned. Unless his battered copy of _Mushrooms of the Westfarthing: Where and How to Find Them_ had a page missing, there was no decent forage in those parts.

"Don't be daft. I've sat beside four score Gamgees each May for nigh on twenty years and we're like as two beans in a pod. A change is as good as a rest as my --"

"No doubt he would, although he's remarkably resistant to change whenever I mention celery root," said Frodo tartly. "But I beg to differ with you about the beans. No one is like you, Sam, not even young Marigold."

"That's kind of you," said Sam, after a brief lapse in awareness during which he imagined that Frodo had paid closer attention to his gardener's tight-collared leeks than a common working hobbit would have expected. "My Gaffer -- "

"Shall we go?" Frodo indicated the opening in the hedge and the sliver of green beyond it. "The sooner we set out, the sooner I can return to my old self. I've let the events of recent months overwhelm my normal ebullience. A long walk will have me back on my feet."

Since Frodo was the same witty, absent-minded, and secretive hobbit whom Bilbo had brought home from Buckland many years ago and was also unconscionably cheerful for someone who seldom rose from his bed before elevenses, Sam was at a loss to determine what this 'old self' might be.

"Yes, Mr. Frodo," he said, with a last forlorn glance at the potting shed which he had come to think of as 'home' in spite of being a relative newcomer to the splendours of its folding bench and deal shelves. His garden diary lay hidden amidst the woollens in his bedroom cabinet and the tools had been put under lock and key by the Gaffer's order. They would be his again in nine days time if Frodo chose to keep him on at Bag End. "Bad company brings bad habits, according to Ted, though I'm sure he meant no disrespect to Master Peregrin. He --"

"Deference," interrupted Frodo with a gesture of distaste, "would be unusual in that quarter. If he meant no disrespect, he ought to have buttoned his lip. Your Gaffer will have opinions on that subject but I don't want to hear them."

He drew his coat about him and clambered nimbly through the hedge, the knapsack jouncing against his bottom. It was evident from the size and shape of his pack that he had remembered not only the ten score handkerchiefs but sundry other items as well. He had refused to allow Sam the privilege of checking his gear that morning though it was obvious he would wish for a lesser burden by the time they had reached the crossroads. A wallet of pipeweed, a pair of mittens, a frying pan, and a full set of utensils were more to the purpose than whatever he had stowed in his kit.

"Nor me," said Sam, squeezing past the neatly clipped branches into the deep grass of the upper meadow. The gap in the privet had been carefully maintained by two generations of gardeners when it would otherwise have grown together since, as Bilbo had often said, one never knew how useful a back door might prove to be. The narrow path from the hedge marked the northern boundary of the common orchard and crossed the Hill in a drift of bluebells until it met the lane on the far side of Hobbiton. The ground was springy and damp underfoot and the sky a stark blue from Greenfields to Hardbottle. A cart rattled in the street below and Sam stopped to gaze at the scattered houses and the red-tiled roofs from which the dew rose in a sun-caught haze. If Harding Gammidge had been less bound by tradition a sweat house of ample proportions could have been raised in Grange Lane and advantage taken of its close proximity to the Mill Pond. There would have been no need for anyone to sleep in a tent near the pig shed.

"Stubborn old blister," he said.

"_Home is behind, the world ahead, and there are many paths to tread --_" replied Frodo, adjusting the pack more comfortably on his shoulders. "-- some of them resulting in blisters. I had no idea that a knapsack jammed with cuffs and handkerchiefs could be so heavy." He squinted at the line of coppiced alders on the river bank. "The bally thing does go on and on, as far as the North Moors at any rate. I've passed that way with Merry and it travels neither east of the sun nor west of the moon."

"I didn't suppose it would," said Sam, whose knowledge of the Water was limited to that part of it which could be seen on a clear day from Bagshot Row. "Mr. Bilbo was a dab hand at doggerel verse but a mite fanciful when the fit was on him. As for linens, I'd sooner share the load than have my dad utter a cutting remark at Gammidge about the size of your knapsack. If it's all the same to you, o' course."

"It generally is," said Frodo, "although your outrageous cheek is likelier than my handkerchiefs to make the Gaffer's hair stand on end." He pulled out his quarter-repeater pocket watch and consulted it for a long moment.

"It's possible that Tolman Cotton's waggon will overtake us before we have a chance to hide ourselves in the bracken, but if they left the farm by eight o'clock and met your family for second breakfast at the _Ivy Bush_, they won't be abreast of the foot bridge earlier than half ten. The likelihood of Master Hamfast catching sight of my knapsack is therefore slim to none. If the hankies prove cumbersome I can send them home from Nobottle by parcel post and no one will be the wiser." Frodo snapped his watch case shut and turned away. "As long as we don't break for elevenses or tea, we should be able to cover twenty-five miles by nightfall. Off we go."

Sam huffed into his weskit at the mention of second breakfast and trudged along the Hill in Frodo's wake with a yearning in his vitals that could not be assuaged by the fine weather or the striking vista of his master's well-clad bottom. On a common-or-garden Monday he would have been seated in the kitchen at Number 3 with a glass of stout and a full stomach while Frodo slept snug as a duck in a ditch under a mound of disordered bedding. After a pipe or two in the door of the shed he could have gone to his work in the hope of a few words with his master at noon and three meals between breakfast and supper. If he had known that a snack at mid-morning would be out of the question -- and tea, as well, he added in a low voice so that Frodo wouldn't hear his complaint -- the pease pudding which he had eaten at dawn would have been accompanied by a coddled egg or a slice of gammon.

He took a peppermint humbug from his pocket and shoved it into his cheek. The sweet had been lying next to the gingham hankie since April and was concealed by a prodigious quantity of lint. It would do little to assuage the hunger which had begun to make a hollow of his insides but the bag of dried fruit was out of reach. If they had journeyed this way in harvest time he could have stolen a low-hanging apple. Now, at the back end of May, the downy green nubbins were no bigger than cobnuts.

The shadows of knotted branches stretched out ahead of them as they marched one behind the other through the waves of crested dogstail, passing from the warmth of the open meadow into the shelter of the orchard. Farmer Cotton had set his skeps among the trees, in the high grass speckled with lady's smock and knapweed, and the woven hives hummed with commotion.

"_Frost or dew in the morning light shows no rain before the night_," said Sam, sucking hard on his mint.

"An astute observation," answered Frodo, "but the cuffs of my breeches are soaking wet. There's something to be said for the Bywater Road though it's ill-suited to hobbit feet in other respects. Last winter I almost lost a cousin in a water-filled rut by the Mill Yard."

"I expect that was Master Pippin," said Sam, halting just beyond the last row of trees and staring at the chimneys of Bagshot Row in the near distance and the figure of Daddy Twofoot standing by the gate. "He's small as a biddy-hen."

Everything seemed far off, as if he had already walked over grass and stone past a hobbit's normal reckoning. Above the sunlit unfurling leaves of pear and apple, the privet hedge mounted the breast of the hill in a great undulating wave, from the ragged corner where they had cut the bolt-hole for Mr. Bilbo to the freestone wall along the Lane. A boxwood dragon would be a fine addition to the prospect and would frighten Lotho Sackville-Baggins better than an oliphaunt frame. He might take up the matter with his Gaffer if an opportunity offered itself between the birch twigs and the duck pond.

"He is," said Frodo, making for the stile without a backward glance, "and one of the least well-behaved of the Tooks, though a pot hole is commonplace when set beside the strange fate of Cousin Lalia."

The humbug clicked against Sam's teeth as he tallied the cost in time and materials. Fifteen twelve inch box shrubs from _Shrewe and Woodshall_ in Frogmorton, ten years' labour, one pair of spring action topiary clippers, and a sub-gardener in June of each year. There were rumours in the village of a box dragon at Michel Delving that belched steam at visitors to the Mathom-house but he could scarce credit the tale. Perhaps he should ask Mr. Gandalf who had a singular knowledge of mechanical gadgets.

"Less so if the blasted lane is full of them, of course. If I'd sprained my ankle our adventure would have been short-lived."

Sam fancied making a sketch of the design but as the master was on the other side of the fence with his green velvet weskit unbuttoned and his face screwed into a frown there wasn't time to search for a pencil.

"What a to-do," he said as he climbed the wooden stile and jumped down into the dirt with a rattle of pots and pans. "Gammon and mustard."

"Not a bit of it," said Frodo. He pointed to the crowd of stones beneath his feet and the furrow in the ground where the spring rain had worn a passage. He glared at Milo Burrows' flock which stood in an orderly manner, their black faces turned to him in rapt admiration. He raised an eyebrow at Sam. "It's rougher than a scrubbing board."

"Well, I'll be blowed," said Sam. "So t'is."

"If I have some remnant of influence in Hobbiton after our exploits in the sweat house, I'll talk to Farmer Cotton about hiring a road-mender at the Mid-year's Fair. Meanwhile, we should -- " Frodo stopped on the grass verge and cocked his ear to listen. "Has that parti-coloured bitch of Sandyman's followed us from the village? There's been an odd sound to our rear since we left Bag End."

Sam coughed past the bulge in his cheek. "That's my humbug, sir. Begging your pardon and meaning no -- "

"My dear Sam." Frodo's frown deepened. "All Hobbiton can see that you have me on leading-strings. The whole _Farthing_ has exchanged gossip on your mastery of the garden and my tolerance of your quirks. _Never_ beg my pardon."

"No, sir," said Sam, baffled by these assertions as everyone knew that Frodo was more pigheaded than most and prone to bouts of whimsy. Ted Sandyman had gone as far as to remark that he was cracked as Griffo Boffin's chimney-pot but Ted's judgement was not highly thought of in the district. The lads at the _Green Dragon_ who were of a less spiteful temperament had agreed over a game of draughts on Friday last that young Mr. Baggins was restless and headstrong but would soon settle.

"If I may finish --" continued Frodo in a mollified tone. "We'll try a shortcut. Why should we twist our ankles in the lane when we can nip down to the bridge by the nearer route? The sheep path begins here. Do you see it?"

"I can see summat," muttered Sam, though he could see only his master teetering on the edge of the bank and the gleam of water at the ford below. He disapproved of shortcuts, especially shortcuts that involved an excess of goosegrass in his foothair, but if his master had taken a dislike to Back Lane there was no help for it. "Happen we'll break our necks either way."

"Rubbish," said Frodo, moving off at a quick pace towards the line of alders. "Hobbits are a sure-footed folk. Haven't you heard _The Bogey Beast of Rushock Bog_?"

Sam chewed the centre of his humbug as he racked his brains for any memory of boggles, goblins or mumpokers in those parts.

"Nan told us the tale of Bone-gnawer," he said at last, "but he was a black hound from Oatbarton with eyes like fiery pinwheels. If bogeys are loose in Rushock Bog we oughtn't to --"

"The mushroom-gathering is well in hand," replied Frodo, "as was the beast once my cousin had been rescued by the renowned sleuth, Gilden Smiles, whose sure-footedness was famed throughout the Farthings before he retired to a cottage in Long Cleeve."

"Sleuth," said Sam, practicing the word under his breath until the humbug had quite gone down. "Sleuth?"

"Yes. It has a complicated etymology. A hobbit who follows a track or trail --" Frodo waved his iron-shod stick at the uneven footpath ahead and the narrow gated bridge. On the far bank, the Bywater Road ran left and right bordered by hedgerows. "Well, a hobbit of that sort is a sleuth. I'd show you the entry in _Languages of the Outer Lands_ but I've left it at Bag End. There wasn't room in my knapsack."

"Ah," said Sam, as he stepped in front of his master to unlatch the gate. Any hobbit could follow a trail unless he was two buttonholes short of a coat and if he lost his way on a foggy night he could ask for directions. Besides, a fellow with no more than the usual amount of common sense knew to carry a slab of bacon instead of a book. "Fancy that."

The bridge was barely wide enough for them to walk abreast and a hobbit of comfortable girth found it hard not to touch shoulders with the lad next to him when that lad was toting a pack the size of a linen press. Sam waited for Frodo to pass, leaning over the rail to look at himself in the slow-moving water, at the crown of reflected branches about his head and the dark green alder leaves floating idly in the current. He gazed upstream to where the river curved around the base of the Hill and disappeared from sight.

"Our Halfred has a smellhound, but he's low-slung and not partial to quagmires."

"Gilden Smiles," answered Frodo, "was a direct descendant of Bandobras Took on his mother's side and by no means low-slung. We, on the other hand, should be hidden in the furze and bracken if we bear right through the trees and aim for the old beech at the waymark. Before we stop for lunch, the waggon will have made the crossroads to Needlehole and Little Delving and be none of our concern. A secluded spot on the river bank, cucumber sandwiches, a wedge of Whitwell Blue..."

"Four foot five inches? T'ain't natural." Sam shut both gates behind them, picked the goosegrass burrs from his breeches, and scrambled up the bank after Frodo. He might not be as tall as some folk but he had plenty of bottom and was no less nimble than a Took of uncertain lineage.

"Possibly not," said Frodo, as Sam came up beside him, "but shall I tell you _The Bogey Beast of Rushock Bog_ as we go?"

"If it's agreeable." Sam knew that his master would tell him in any case and if the tale became tangled he could while away the duller moments with thoughts of the ham pie he had thrust into his knapsack at the last minute. It was too early in the year for cucumbers, but the parcel of bread and butter, the Champion radishes, and the freshly-picked watercress would do in a pinch.

"Not very agreeable for some," replied Frodo, slashing at the bracken with his stick. "This particular tale begins with the sudden unexplained death of a third cousin and the footprints of a gigantic hound."

"Bless me, that's a rum go," said Sam, groping for a second humbug. He had been afraid that he might lose Frodo in the undergrowth and would have volunteered to go ahead of him into the shelter of the trees but his master had already vanished. Above the rustle of his feet among the needles and the call of a cuckoo, Frodo's voice could be heard reciting the story of a family curse, an heir from Greenholm, and a brace of stolen dwarf boots. Sam hurried to catch him up and for the next few miles through the fir wood and the open glade, the sprawling mass of periwinkle and sweet woodruff, he sucked his humbug and attended to the gripping tale of Frodo's distant relation.

It was a sad disappointment that after so many adventures the Bogey Beast turned out to be the son of Sarn Puddifoot's truffle hound, Spothog, and the wrongdoer a Brandybuck cousin whose father had married a lass from Bree and changed his name to Longholes. Gilden Smiles had downed the innocent beast with a stone from his slingshot, recovered the missing dwarf boots, and taken his servant, who had shown an admirable degree of patience during the ordeal, to the _Golden Perch_ for supper.

"Ballocks," said Sam.

"I make no claims for its accuracy," said Frodo, as they emerged from the bracken to find themselves within sight of the ancient beech, "but Gilden Smiles was a useful chap. He saved young Brandybuck from a tight spot."

"That lad with the game leg -- " The servant's faithfulness might have played a greater part in the adventure than Frodo had let on, a part for which a portion of veal pie at the _Perch_ had been a meagre reward, but Sam had no chance to give his opinion as Frodo had thrown off his knapsack and dropped to his knees in the grass. "Sir?"

"Lunch," said Frodo, scattering handkerchiefs broadcast as he rummaged in his pack. "I have a crock of pickled onions, some hard-boiled eggs, half a roast chicken and various sundries. We should be several pounds lighter when we arrive in Gamwich and if we run out of necessities we can forage in the woods. What have you brought?"

Sam had been determined not to be caught short. He wasn't averse to mushrooms provided they grew along the path, but dandelions and wild garlic were for those who couldn't carry their own supplies. He eased the straps off his shoulders and lowered his pack to the ground. The Water was calm below the falls and damselflies fluttered just above the surface, their pale violet underbellies flashing in and out of the shadows. He unbuckled the flap and took out his pipe-weed pouch, wishing there was time for tea as well before his master led them into Rushock Bog. Frodo's face was flushed from the effort of lugging an unaccustomed weight and he would be all the better for a good strong cup.

"Cheese, bacon, hard biscuits, dried apples, pork sausages, wheaten bread --" he said, lifting out two stone bottles of ginger beer and offering one to Frodo, "-- and a ham pie."

"Why don't you fill the kettle? We might have a small fire if it's not too much trouble." Frodo uncorked his portable inkwell and fished a notebook from beneath a stack of hankies. "I shouldn't have bothered with these bits and pieces, but if I'm to record what passes in the sweat house for my monograph on Westfarthing dialects I must have paper."

Sam would have asked for a spare slip had he not been in awe of the calfskin binding and thick wad of lined pages; it would be a shame to use it for tinder. Instead, he made a nest of dry grass and assembled enough kindling to build a fire while Frodo sat cross-legged with the inkwell balanced on his knee. When the spark had caught in the touchwood and the sticks were blazing merrily, Sam knelt back on his haunches and watched for a moment as Frodo wrote a few sentences at the top of the flyleaf and underlined them twice.

"Dialects?" he said.

"Folk-talk, as it were. The Tighfield dialect differs from the Bywater dialect and the Whitwell from the Greenfields. You must have noted the peculiarities of Peregrin Took's speech." Frodo bit the end of his quill thoughtfully. "Not merely his speech, to be honest, but it runs in the family. Ferumbras has the most unusual --"

"He's nowt but a bairn," said Sam and collected the iron kettle from his gear, stumping down to the river's edge to fill it in the slow current. A quarter hour of unbroken quiet with his feet in the water and a fishing rod in his hand would have gone a long way towards clearing his head of Frodo's gabble but his master was still talking and the words 'hinder end like a dumpling' drifted to Sam's ears willy-nilly. When he returned to the camp, Frodo had opened the pickle crock and was mopping up a spill with one of his hankies. The roast chicken, sporting an ill-used air after its night in the ice box, had been cut into thin slices and festooned with a splodge of boiled dressing.

"But the less said about Ferumbras, the better," continued Frodo, wiping spiced vinegar from his shirt cuff. "Let me give you another example. The Buckland pronunciation of our host's name might be 'Harding Gammidge' whereas Andwise Roper -- a hobbit of decided opinion, I gather -- would refer to his cousin as 'Mester 'Arding'. Am I right?"

"Daft curmudgeon would be more apt," replied Sam as he made a tripod of green sticks and hung the kettle to boil. He unwrapped a paper packet of tea and spooned two measures into the pot while keeping an eye on the notebook which now had a smear of grease across the leaves.

"Ah, the pejorative." Frodo jotted down the phrase and drew a flourish around it. "Might I credit you with the saying in the appendices? I won't reveal your name."

"I was joshing, sir. They call him Old Gammidgy after my great-granddad, Hob the Roper. It's a -- " He groped for the word.

"An honorific," said Frodo. "I've noticed that your family has a confusing number of surnames. Wiseman Gamwich, Hob Gammidge the Roper, Roper Gamgee, Andwise Roper -- " He added the names to his list and counted them with an inky finger. "Four generations all told. The name of 'Baggins' has stayed put for over two hundred years. _There's always been a Baggins living under the Hill_, as Bilbo used to say. It wasn't true, of course; Bungo Baggins built Bag End with Belladonna Took's money. Balbo lived in a crumbling cottage on South Lane in Bywater. You can see the ruin from the parlour of the _Green Dragon._"

If Frodo kept on, there would be no family secrets that hadn't been preserved for posterity in _Natural History and Antiquities of the Westfarthing_ or one of the many other books on which he claimed to be working. Sam was prepared to be helpful where the intricacies of Tighfield mating customs were concerned, but for the most part he had begun to feel like the great carp in Bywater Pond, the length of whose fins was an object of interest to hobbits from as far off as Hardbottle. Perhaps he shouldn't have mentioned Nan Gamgee's unfortunate end and the queerness of Cousin Harding. The surname of Gamgee might be hard to untangle for those unfamiliar with his longfather tree but it was obvious why his mother had called him a halfwit.

"Hamson goes by 'Roper', too," he said, "but I plan to stay on at Number 3. Have a bit of chicken, sir, and mind the inkwell. A sip of that and you'll have the wiffle-woffles."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Frodo, as he cleaned the quill on a handkerchief and put away the glass bottle in its travelling case. He brought out his smoking things, the worn leather wallet and the cherry wood pipe. "Not the stomach-ache, I mean, but your reluctance to leave Hobbiton. I'd miss your coddled eggs, if nothing else."

Sam blushed. He had dreams of giving his master more than coddled eggs before the journey was done and several times on highdays if the wind was in the right quarter.

"Thankee, sir. Today's egg is better than tomorrow's hen, so some would have it." He sprinkled salt on the chicken and arranged the radishes in a semi-circle along the edge of his plate. "Though I favour cock in wine sauce with bacon and mushrooms."

"Don't we all," said Frodo, his expression downcast. He poked at the strands of Old Toby. "_Glossary of Westfarthing Words and Phrases, with examples of their use: to which are added the Culinary Customs of the Shire._ Blue buckram with red gilt labels. What do you think?"

"Ah," said Sam around his hard-boiled egg. "Meaning no disrespect --"

"I should remove that word from my vocabulary, if I were you. It sits more happily on Master Hamfast."

"I suppose it does, sir, but the lads at the inn would be less fond of tittle-tattle if my Gaffer were hard by. _Mr. Frodo is writing a book for the Bywater and District Circulating Library_, I told them on Friday. _T'ain't all cakes and ale at Bag End._ I'd have fallen to blows with Ted Sandyman 'cept the landlord's ratter bit Ted on his how-de-do and I had the last word. _If the Master is walking in the hills at midnight it's for a purpose, and that purpose is a book._ Am I wrong, sir?"

"In part." Frodo poured the water for tea and set out a jar of honey from his own hives. "The Circulating Library has five patrons and a copy of the _Farmers' Almanac_. Their budget doesn't run to gilt labels and I doubt very much whether it would include a Shire chrestomathy. However, you're right about cakes and ale. I prefer Old Winyards and a full-bodied blue cheese."

"Did you ever!" said Sam, who thought that Bilbo's private stock tasted of Nan Goodchild's cough syrup. He didn't care to press the matter since Frodo's midnight rambles were none of anyone's business, but the flurry of rumours at the _Green Dragon_ and the attendant sly glances annoyed him no end. If the master had been plainer when mention was made of Bilbo's whereabouts or his own frequent absences, nobody would have remarked on either. Not often, at any rate.

"Have you gone to visit elves?" he asked, holding his breath and his pickled onion.

"Now and then," admitted Frodo, busying himself with the mugs and spoons while Sam waited for tales of the king in Mirkwood or the blithe-hearted folk at Rivendell who smelled like starlight. "You might have noticed -- "

Sam nodded encouragement as Frodo pointed the honey dipper at the tea pot.

"You might have noticed," Frodo continued, his eyes distant as if he were totting up sums, "that your speech differs from Farmer Cotton's just as mine differs from Cousin Bilbo's. It's a question of linguistic change over generations. I plan to record Harding Gammidge's speech as an example of the older Westfarthing dialect. So the next time your friends at the _Green Dragon_ bandy my name about, tell them I'm mad and be done with it."

Sam's shoulders slumped in defeat. "They already know it, sir, begging your pardon. And if you mean that Harding talks queer --"

"I do. It's a wonder that you understand each other." Frodo dribbled a ribbon of honey into Sam's mug and passed it across to him. "Then again, it may be that you _don't_ understand each other except through the silent ritual of the sweat house. If Harding were to say _'ah'll clout thi' lug 'ole_ you might not grasp his meaning directly but if he confronted you in the altogether --"

"Aye?"

"We call it 'communal display'." Frodo turned a page of the notebook and licked the end of his pencil lead. "The springle-ring is of a similar character."

"Is that so?" said Sam. "Fancy."

"I fancy it as well," replied Frodo. "And I shall add a chapter on the subject, if you have no objections. I'll be taking notes throughout this ordeal."

"Oh, fiddle," mumbled Sam, dipping his head for a mouthful of tea. He had learned to suffer the scrutiny of the barmaid at the _Green Dragon_ and the good-natured jibes at the All Shire Wrestling Club, but he hadn't realised that if things got out of hand in the sweat house, Frodo would grasp his meaning in a way that could not be gainsaid.

"I didn't quite catch that," said Frodo. "I dare say you have no objections on your own account, but do you mean to say that Harding will baulk at my writing implements?"

"He won't have seen the like before."

"Won't have seen a No-blot Indelible Pencil!" exclaimed Frodo, deftly flicking his cuffs away from a close encounter with the boiled dressing. "He lives in the back of beyond with _no pencils_, a shed the size of Farmer Newbold's pig barn, and the honour of being the oldest Gamgee this side of the Brandywine. What does he do for amusement?"

"Oh, as to that --" Sam rubbed the side of his nose while he considered whether a deliberate falsehood would be fitting at this stage of the journey. If the lack of amenities in Gammidge or the prospect of a morning swim in the duck pond had failed to discourage Frodo, there was scant reason to think that he would be upset by what Sam chose to tell him about Westfarthing traditions. He was unlikely to return home until he had filled his notebook with every last tittle on curious bathing customs and quizzed Sam's relations from first breakfast to fourses. At present, his face was alight with interest and the plate of chicken, momentarily abandoned, was in danger of sliding off his lap into the grass. "He talks to the swine. Five Willowbottom Old Spots and three Pincup Whites. Would you care to take off your jacket, sir? The heat-"

"I don't believe you," said Frodo. He shoved the pencil into his breast pocket and resumed his meal with an air of pained resignation. "Swine have little conversation, in my experience. I'll ask you again tomorrow."

"I could fasten it to the bottom of my pack or --"

Frodo's brow wrinkled as if the bottom of Sam's pack were on the far side of the Misty Mountains surrounded by goblins.

"The weather is of no consequence," he said, his hand wandering to the horn buttons of the bottle-green weskit. "I won't be seen abroad in my shirtsleeves."

He was content to be seen with his collar undone, his hair in knots, and a sheen of sweat on the bridge of his nose. He showed no concern for the ink-stained handkerchief or the trail of crumbs marring the placket of his wool breeches. And although he had the largest collection of coats in the Farthing and a multitude of wardrobes in which to house them, he was unable to keep his clothes in order for longer than it took to hand out the ribbons at the Bywater Agricultural and Cheese Show. If a gang of lasses were to tidy him each day for a fortnight, he would remain as rumpled as a cock pheasant in moult.

Sam contemplated the smooth grey trunk of the copper beech, the tasselled stems of sheep's fescue, and the high arch of unclouded sky where an inland gull could be seen breasting the wind. Above the dry rustle of willow branches and black alder, the mournful note of a wood pigeon fell listlessly through the sultry air. There wasn't a whisper of movement elsewise in any direction.

"There's no one here," he said, the mug of tea cool between his hands. He threw the dregs into the cow parsley and rose to empty the kettle on the fire. If they were to walk eight leagues in a day and interrupt the expedition with a hunt for mushrooms, they would need to save their talk till later.

"You're here," answered Frodo. "I'm aware that my manners at Bag End are wanting; Aunt Dora tells me so often and at great length. Nevertheless, I'm willing to acknowledge that a gentlehobbit abroad without his coat is an improperly dressed gentlehobbit. I should have worn my straw hat as well. If I'm browner than a berry by Highday it will be my own fault."

Sam had no quibble with his master's manners. His hours in the garden would have seemed more burdensome had it not been for the rare glimpse of Frodo at the window in his ruffled nightshirt. No skin could be as pale and clear or less like a berry, and though he would never admit it, Sam was keen to see if his master was equally fair in those parts which the nightshirt hid from view.

It was a hardship to be love-struck. He had tried not to stare at Frodo but Marigold, the saucy minx, and who knew how many others had found him out. If his Gaffer were to hear a tag end of gossip at the _Ivy Bush_ would he think it worse that Sam fancied another lad or that he fancied a lad who was also Master?

"You're welcome to my hat," he said, fingering the edge of the rippled brim where it poked from the top of his pack. It bore a marked resemblance to a flour sack and had been pressed into service as a portable cold cupboard for the pork sausages and ham pie. There was no sense in not getting your money's worth, as the Gaffer would have said in a like situation.

Frodo looked at the hat for a minute as he chewed the last of his chicken.

"It's very kind of you," he said, "but I won't deprive the sausages of their protection. They have some miles to go before supper. Why don't you rinse the dishes while I study Bilbo's map?"

"Aye, sir," said Sam, although he would sooner have studied the map and left the dishes to their own devices. Frodo had turned his attention from the remnants of his lunch and was examining the northward course of The Water as if to gauge the amount of time necessary for a tour of Rushock Bog. Sam winced.

"On the subject of curious bathing customs -- " said Frodo as Sam dunked the tin plates in the river and wiped them with his handkerchief. "You mentioned that Gamgees bathe in hot water _like normal folk._ Does Harding bathe or steam?"

Sam had only the vaguest recollection of his cousin's personal habits but it was too cold in the Westmarch for a hobbit of five score years to doff his clothes in winter. _Cast not a clout till May be out_, as Gammer Catchpole had said when the Widow Rumble was seen in the Wednesday market with no mittens.

"There's nary a bath in -- "

"Gamwich. I thought not. No bath, no public house, no indoor plumbing, no pencils. Ten miles from the nearest bath for three days, huddled together in squalid conditions, a diet of field beans and fennel tea... I shouldn't wonder if the festivities end with a few rounds of 'Ten Green Bottles.'"

"They have done, once or twice," said Sam, creeping up behind his master just as the map disappeared into the side pocket of Frodo's knapsack. He wanted a glimpse of it in the worst way, though not as much as he wanted other things, but he could never think how to ask for what didn't immediately concern him. The garden was his proper sphere and how was Frodo to know that he had learned to read maps when Bilbo had tired of his questions about the Lonely Mountain and shown him the _Desolation of Smaug_? It was on parchment, in red and black ink.

He spoke not a word of the mysterious runes or the Worm itself, but filled his pockets with dried apple, buckled the flap on his pack, and stuck his pipe between his teeth in a determined effort to smoke it rather than commit himself further as to Harding's cleanliness. Frodo hoisted his gear without any additional animadversions on Gammidge customs and they marched off in single file, the chalk soil of the Bywater Road ascending in a great curve to their left.

The land east of Hobbiton was criss-crossed by stone walls, punctuated with swelling thatched roofs above round unpainted doors, and busy with travellers pausing to lift a pint at the _Green Dragon_ before resuming the journey to Waymeet or Michel Delving. To the west, however, cultivated fields rapidly gave way to grass-covered downs dotted with yellow rattle and rock roses or the pale violet lips of bee orchids. Stands of beech and ash grew in the valley bottoms and there, if Frodo could be persuaded to give up his quest for bog mushrooms, they might find something as palatable to complement the ham pie.

"I'd planned to bypass Nobottle," said Frodo, after a lengthy spell of silent communion with his pipeweed and tinderbox, "but from what you've told me a bath is imperative. I won't be caught in the sweat house with dirt behind my ears. If we stop for elevenses at the _Flying Beagle_ we can have a scrub and brush up in the private room and continue to --"

He thrashed at an umbel of salad burnet with his stick. "To where, exactly? There's a crease in the map between Nobottle and Tighfield but I'm sure that Bilbo spent the night at a fly speck of some sort in the vicinity. He had Grubb cousins who kept a hostelry at Nobottle but I --"

"We can?" interrupted Sam, too distracted by the possibility of seeing to Frodo's earlobes, or whatever odds and ends were in need of a polish, to take in that he had been asked a question.

"_I_ can," replied Frodo, dropping back to walk beside him. "You may do as you please. I repeat -- "

"That would be Nettlebed, sir, or Lesser Nobottle as it was in my Nan's day. The village moved westwards on account of the limestone." Sam had no memory of either place since the Gaffer favoured the road through Little Delving, but Anson Roper swore that _nowt good comes out o' Nettlebed 'cept the stone from Coolscar Quarry._ "The shed at Bag End is founded on Nettlebed chippings."

"The shed is your be-all and end-all," said Frodo, as if his gardener's preoccupation with potting up seedlings was both unexpected and worrisome.

"Maybe," answered Sam, with little hope that a Baggins would comprehend the finer points of a shed which had replaced Holman Greenhand's wooden lean-to after the Great Storm of 1387. His master had been in Buckland, at the time, kicking his heels with gentry. "But my dad mixed the sand and clay with his own two feet."

"I'm not surprised he has rheumatism." Frodo proffered the pipeweed pouch and waited while Sam lit his briar, the pungent smoke coiling around their heads as Sam contrived to blow several perfect O's in quick succession. "We'll have our bath in Nettlebed then, and our last sight of linen sheets, too. Or would you prefer to bed down in a field this side of Tighfield?"

"Naw," said Sam, who had no preferences about where to bed his master -- indeed, a patch of gorse by the wayside would do to relieve the uncomfortable tightness in his breeches -- but whose thoughts on shared bathing were impervious to coherent response.

"Good fellow," said Frodo a trifle absently, plucking a sprig of wild thyme and threading it through his button-hole. "My young cousins are less considerate."

"Well, knock me for six!" said Sam with an attempt at disbelief that no one at Number 3 would have believed for a moment. "Who'd have guessed it?"

The lads at the _Ivy Bush_ had agreed that Gandalf was responsible on both occasions for Bilbo's disappearance, but Frodo's unwillingness to 'settle' was plainly the fault of that queer lot from the wrong side of the Brandywine. Sam had borne the presence of Bucklanders at Bag End with grim determination, but the disquiet he suffered when his master left Hobbiton in their company was beyond description. It was not, however, a justification for impertinence and he slanted his gaze sideways to gauge the effect of his remark.

"Quite," answered Frodo, no hint of dismay in his voice. "Surely anyone habituated to the conveniences of a capacious hole would scorn a stranger's back pasture. Nonetheless, I'm glad of the chance to stretch my legs on such a glorious day."

Sam would rather have stretched his in the garden where the odds of enjoying seven square meals a day were better than fair to middling, but as he had been obliged to attend the Gathering for want of an excuse to stay at home, he could see no reason not to fill his eyes with the magnificent prospect before him. Frodo had lapsed into a brown study and showed no inclination to resume his tale of Gilden Smiles' supper at the _Golden Perch_. If Sam were to hang back, the humdrum appurtenances of the rural Westfarthing -- upflung hills steep-sided as pudding bowls, the narrow path like a ravelled thread between heaven and earth -- would be enhanced by the immense, and currently oblivious, charms of Frodo Baggins, Esq. A woollen-clad rump and a fine pair of legs were a consolation to a hobbit whose supper was some hours away and when Frodo turned his head to examine a maze gill on a fallen oak trunk Sam decided that he would forego the ham pie indefinitely if he could feast instead on his master's dark and tangled hair. He knew little of conveniences and scorned neither a capacious hole nor a stranger's back pasture in the right company, but as nothing was to be gained from drawing Frodo's attention to his presence with an observation on their sleeping arrangements, he walked as softly as a mouse in a thicket, content to remain unnoticed in the rear. He might have made a good-natured rejoinder on the delight to be had from fair weather but the usual hobbit pleasantries came reluctantly to his lips when there were weightier matters to consider.

He considered them for what might have been hours, while Frodo twirled his walking stick or stooped to pluck a field poppy for his button-hole or whistled through his teeth in a way that would have been irritating if he had been a Brandybuck and not a Baggins. By the time Sam raised his eyes from his considerations or, strictly speaking, his master's considerations, their shadows had begun to ease out at right angles to the path and his thirst was so great that no mere humbug could quench it. He put on his hat and squinted at the hills to either hand, their round tops crowned with spinneys of elm and beech.

"A fellow could build a tidy hole in these parts if he was averse to company. No room for taters though."

"Indeed not," said Frodo, leaning on his stick and assessing the terrain. "Nor anything else requiring a flattish bit of land. The run-off during the winter months must be ferocious. If it weren't for the oat-grass we'd be in mud to our ankles." He waved his free hand towards the furrowed track which vanished into a fold of darker green at a distance of some two hundred paces. "But I should deem it worth the effort if we uncovered a patch of mushrooms in that pine woods ahead. What do you say?"

Sam grunted. A rummage in his pockets had failed to turn up so much as a sliver of humbug and the last bottle of ginger beer was inaccessible. The lack of alehouses in this corner of the Westfarthing would prove to be more troublesome than a bare trencher unless he found something to keep his mouth from going dry as a dwarf's bath towel whenever he looked at his master's --

"Slippery Jacks," he said quickly. "You won't find Penny Buns till Afterlithe."

"I didn't expect to," replied Frodo as he stabbed his stick into the squelchy turf and pressed onwards. "I may not be a jobbing gardener, but I have a copy of _Mushrooms Demystified_ in the pantry. A Slippery Jack in the hand is worth two Penny Buns in the bush."

"Chance would be a fine thing," murmured Sam, against his better judgement. That he had toyed with a similar idea while preparing Frodo's garden for the onslaught of Odo Proudfoot's great-nephew was one thing. That Frodo should skirt the edges of impropriety, however unwittingly, was altogether different. He plucked at his felt hat as it was nearer than his forelock. "Begging your --"

Frodo twisted his neck to glance at Sam with a confused expression. "Why should you? The dearth of Penny Buns in May is scarcely your fault. Or does your gardening sleight-of-hand extend to mushrooms out-of-season?"

"No, sir," said Sam, nevertheless aware that he had been remiss in not having broached the subject of a mushroom log at Bag End.

"Then we're agreed that a young Slippery Jack with a pale, firm stem is edible?"

"Aye, though Dad broke out in a rash last Yule 'cos of--"

"I remember the incident," said Frodo, as they came into the shade of the outlying trees. The sunlight fell in hazy bands through the sparse branches and the ground was crisp with needles. "We all do. Several fellows at the _Ivy Bush_ offered to stand him a pint of bitter if he would stop telling the story. I can only imagine what it must have been like at Number 3."

"Awkward, sir, though I say it as shouldn't." Gaffer Gamgee had endeavoured to wring the utmost from his curious infirmity and if the Widow Rumble hadn’t attracted the interest of her neighbours by twisting an ankle on a clump of couch-grass, the remains of the wretched fungus would have made the rounds of the public taverns for a six-month. "Shall I help you off with your knapsack?"

"Not at present, but if you could dig out a clean hankie from the left-hand pocket we can begin filling it with these spindly white thingumbobs half-buried in the leaf mould. I'd have brought my copy of _Mushrooms Demystified_ but your expertise is more reliable than 357 pages with 21 plates and numerous woodcuts, one very similar to the other. What do you think? Are they edible?"

Sam was loath to admit that his knowledge of the Shire reached no farther than five leagues from the Bywater Pond with the exception of Harding's homestead, the family business in Tighfield, and a string of country inns between Hobbiton and Gammidge. He thumbed through his memories of _Figwort's Seed Catalogue_ and _The Planter's Calendar_ but to no avail.

"I wouldn't cross the road for summat so tiddy," he said at last, "not even if I was a poor hobbit in want of meat and drink. Nan Gamgee had a bonnet that was uncommon like them and one summer -- "

"Perhaps not," said Frodo briskly, "but size, as I'm sure you realise, is irrelevant in this case. If we can't make a meal of them we can at least put them in a salad. A sprinkle of lemon juice, a sprig of rosemary... If recollection serves, an entry in _Flirtatious Fungi_ speaks of a bell-shaped mushroom of modest aspect that smells and tastes of radishes. My nose is full of pine pollen. However -- "

He knelt and sniffed the caps, his bottom swaying in a manner reminiscent of a hog after white truffles.

"Red Comet," he announced and popped a portion of the cluster into his mouth before Sam was able to offer a word of caution. He chewed it thoughtfully but with no obvious signs of enjoyment and swallowed it down in one go.

"Well, sir, and how was it?" asked Sam, a glimmer of mirth in his tone at Frodo's evident distaste.

"Somewhat tough and flavourless when weighed against the merits of the Amethyst Deceiver," replied Frodo, rising with an effort. "And not as vivacious as the Field Blewit. Unfortunately, I can't see anything but these in our immediate vicinity. We would fare better if we came this way in autumn with rush baskets and a mushroom hunter's manual."

"Happen we could." Sam would be too busy with the harvest to oblige his master but should Frodo have a mind for such a venture once the frost was on the turnips, he could invite Master Merry or that Fredegar Bolger who was a staunch trencher-mate of injudicious habits. Sam would dine on Penny Buns from Bywater Wood in the comfort of Number 3.

"We shan't bother with a salad," said Frodo, retrieving the handkerchief from Sam and cramming it into the waistband of his breeches. "In fact, we shan't bother with mushroom-hunting at all today; there will be other opportunities. Should I note the location on the off-chance that we travel this road in November? It's a pretty spot and astonishingly -- _green_. Have you noticed?"

"Green, sir?" Sam stared at the dull brown trunks, the sparse undergrowth of bilberry and fern, and the bristly mat of spent needles. A dense cloud of gnats ghosted skywards in a shaft of light. "It's no greener than it was ten minutes ago, if you don't mind me -- "

"Green, my dear Sam, is the hub around which the heart of every hobbit must inevitably turn. The scent of parsley or new-mown grass, the iridescence of a hummingbird's feathers, the stonecrop that trembles beneath the careless foot of the itinerant shepherd, the mating-call of an amorous woodpecker in the hedgerow." He spread his arms wide and breathed so deeply that he might have overbalanced into the bracken if Sam hadn't put out a restraining hand. "The hills throb and swell with the irresistible greenness of spring in -- in --"

He paused. "Where are we again? My sense of direction has gone through the sieve."

Sam's brows drew together. "West of the Water and a half day's journey from Hobbiton. Those mushrooms --"

Frodo flung an arm across Sam's shoulders and his voice fell to a whisper. "We'll gather a sackful on our return. The S-Bs have been angling for a supper invitation since Yule. If you were to sneak one or two into the appetisers they might -- that is to say --"

He leaned forward until his nose was an inch from Sam's. "Have they always been green? Blue is more usual in the Westfarthing, of course, but I've often thought it a pity. Green is the pinnacle of -- "

"You'd have to quiz my Gaffer," said Sam, thinking that not even Old Noakes' infamous remedy for gout had made such a pickle of his master's eyes. They were darker than bog whortleberries and far too close given the circumstances. Sam shifted nervously, his placket tighter than a tick. "As to the other -- if they had a smatch of wild mushroom croquettes there'd be no keeping Mistress Lobelia from the cutlery drawer nor Mr. Otho from the cellar."

"Psht!"

Frodo's smirk was unbecoming to the owner of three virgates and an assortment of perquisites though not to be wondered at in the great-nephew of Hildifons Took. He prodded Sam's midriff.

"Don't be a spoil-pudding. Bilbo was quite wrong to fob her off with a case of spoons. I've shared an excessive number of minor treasures and could afford to share the rest in the interests of -- of -- " His gaze meandered down the length of Sam's person and came to rest a smidgen to the left of his blackthorn stick. "What splendid toes!"

"Thank you, sir," said Sam cautiously, unwilling to be persuaded by even the most fulsome flattery to slip a peculiar fungus into Lobelia Sackville-Baggins's supper dish. A hobbit of means, eccentricities notwithstanding, was compelled to treat his lesser relations with a measure of respect no matter how it pained him and so must his servants.

"But _why_ won't they stay put?"

Sam shrugged. "Mr. Bilbo used to ask that of my Gaffer after a bottle of Old Winyards, not but what he might have done so when he was sober as a shirriff; no one at the _Ivy Bush_ has a kind word for rackrenters. Dad says the Sackville holdings will have run to seed by now. _Plantain and thistles_ he -- "

"No, Sam, your feet. They're surging towards me like the froth on a pint of Hardacre's Best." Frodo bent over and touched one, a look of eager anticipation crossing his features. "They _feel_ normal enough and there are five little piggies on each of them."

"I should think so," cried Sam, hastily pulling in his toes. "It's your noddle that wants fixing, as you'd know in two ticks if you hadn't eaten a dodgy mushroom. And unless you plan to eat another -- which I hope you don't though my Gaffer would scold me for giving advice to gentry -- we ought to be off."

Frodo made a rude noise and might have followed it with an uncouth gesture if his hands hadn't been busily engaged in exploring the forest litter for a trace of Sam's great toes. "_A Hobbiton lad in a hurry, whose feet were astoundingly furry_ -"

"None o' that, sir." Sam grabbed Frodo's elbow and dragged him upright, as if the mere fact of a steadying presence could knock some sense into his master. "Come along out of here, or you'll be arse over teakettle in the ferns."

"Righty-ho," said Frodo with a last intake of pine-scented air and a wistful glance at the offending mushrooms. "As you seem keen on the idea of being somewhere else, perhaps you can explain where we're going while I invent a suitable rhyme for 'furry'."

"Gammidge," said Sam, hooking his arm through Frodo's to prevent any further assaults on flirtatious fungi. If they were very lucky, the afternoon would have worn to a close before Frodo had thoroughly explored the possibilities of 'slurry', 'worry' and 'scurry'. By then, he would be tucked up safe in his bedroll with a belly full of pork sausage. The trouble was, thought Sam, as they regained the path and easily fell into step, that he might choose to recite his bit of doggerel at the Gathering where eighty unsympathetic Gamgees could judge his sanity. The Bagginses were known for spontaneous versifying but a Gamgee had never been the subject of it. "Seven leagues nor'-west of Tighfield."

"Ah yes. The inhibiting effect of frigid pond water on the jolly old hobbit nutmegs." Frodo scrunched his eyes shut as the long rays of the westering sun smote his face. He gripped Sam's sleeve. "Stap my vitals! Are you sure we haven't strayed too near the Southfarthing? Bilbo's book on natural anomalies doesn't mention glowing vegetation in -- in -- Where are we, my dear? I don't recognise the place."

It was the longest day of Sam's life. Frodo's awakening to the wonders of oat-grass required that he pause at least once every hundred yards to express his admiration for its colour and growing habits. He speculated on the reasons for the varying shades of ground cover and arrived, by ways inscrutable to Sam, at the truth of the adage that grass is frequently greener on the far side of the hedge. Had the landscape not been a monotonous succession of balding hills punctuated by the odd sentinel beech or gnarled ash, he would have frozen in his tracks ten times in as many minutes to remark on the beauties of the Shire in blossom.

It was monotonous, however, and by dint of a firm hand on his arm he was kept from suffering a mischance though not from pronouncing at regular intervals that some spot or other was 'quite the greenest he had ever seen.' Sam allowed as how the spot in question was greener than most, if you cared to make a comparison, but might be pleasanter when viewed from the window of a public house with Bywater beer on tap. If he was disturbed by the warmth of Frodo's hip nudging his own more often than was strictly necessary, he tried not to show it.

By late afternoon, Frodo's outbursts had dwindled to the fanciful conjectures of a frustrated scholar of plant lore and thence to the shamefaced acknowledgement that he had, painful as it was to speak of it, eaten a mushroom _Flirtatious Fungi_ had warned him against. Sam was sufficiently convinced by this confession to leave off holding on to his arm and they resumed their proper places with Frodo to the fore, swinging his stick as if nothing untoward had occurred between lunch and the much-anticipated supper.

They had been following the course of a chalk stream for the better part of an hour, the sadly neglected ham pie a burden in Sam's knapsack so long after his accustomed tea-time, when the sun dipped behind the westernmost hill with a nod of dismissal and the path, the limpid leaf-flecked water, and the stands of sweet flag on the near bank fell into shadow.

"That was quick," said Sam, who was unused to sunsets that nipped off smartly without a fare-thee-well. His lantern hung out of reach at the base of his pack, as did everything he had wanted that day apart from the bag of humbugs, but if they were to continue on until the last shred of yellow had faded into night he would need its light to make camp. "P'raps I _wouldn't_ dig a smial in such a darkish corner of the Farthing. These hills..."

"I've yet to meet a hobbit who doesn't like walking in the dark," said Frodo, in a tone of voice that prohibited any requests for help with the lantern. "The ancient alliance of Harfoots and dwarves bestowed on us a penchant for nightly strolls and confined spaces."

"Come again?" Sam strolled to the _Green Dragon_ on Friday evenings in dry weather but he preferred the bedrooms at Bag End to his own cramped pigeon-hole next to the airing cupboard as would any sensible lad.

Frodo stopped in his tracks and appeared to study the sunset for several moments before turning to Sam with somewhat of his old expression. The mushroom had evidently left his system.

"You didn't suppose," he said stiffly, "that we gained little from the association other than a rudimentary knowledge of mechanical devices and a fondness for cuckoo clocks?"

Sam sucked his teeth in dismay.

"T'ain't my job to _suppose_, Mr. Frodo. My job is to sow the nasturtians and tidy up indoors after someone I shan't name has taken too much. If that someone tumbles into a stream 'cos the night's as black as the inside of a tinker's budget, I'll fetch him out."

"Tumble?" replied Frodo, seemingly prepared to overlook the disgraceful presumption of his gardener. "I have it on good authority that hobbits are sure-footed. If you have any doubts on that score you might want to consult _Concerning Hobbits, with Sundry Remarks on Pipeweed_. The Curator at the Mathom-house will be more than happy to show it to you. It states on page 13 that _'they'_ \-- meaning hobbits -- _'are inclined to be fat and do not hurry unnecessarily; they are nonetheless nimble and deft in their movements'._ Cheeky bugger but not far off the mark."

"Hogwash," answered Sam, placing a surreptitious hand on his mid-section. "I'd wager that not even Mr. Bilbo's dwarvish friends travelled without a lantern. What's the sense of walking in the dark when we could be roasting sausages and --"

Frodo drew himself up to his full height and stared down his nose at Sam.

"You're never going to leave this alone, are you?"

"Sir?" It was a seemly nose with a flare to the nostrils that spoke of a decided will to have its way provided that no one else was greatly inconvenienced. Sam had often admired it.

"Since the road goes ever on and on for thirteen leagues, shouldn't we forge ahead? A stroll by star-light with a merry tune on our lips, the call of a night-jar... How better to spend the evening?"

"Sausages," mumbled Sam, without knowing whether it was an oath or a suggestion. If he had approached his master when Frodo had mentioned the unusual itch -- and he might, at the very least, have hinted that cures for common ailments could be found in the garden -- there would be no nonsense now about _walking._ Granted, hobbits were less sure-footed in the dark, but Sam didn't need the sun to know where to put a thing.

"Oh, all right." Frodo would have shrugged off his knapsack in the middle of the path had Sam not pointed towards a stand of alders clustered near a lichen-covered outcropping a short distance away. There was a grassy hollow amidst their roots big enough for two hobbits to sleep side by side and an abundance of dead branches and moss to build a fire. The limestone would give shelter from prevailing winds if the weather became blustery although the sky augured a clear night and an equally fine morning.

"Capital," said Frodo and, while Sam lit the lantern and laid out plates, cutlery and tea-kettle in a neat row, he swiftly gathered the kindling -- humming a tune which Sam suspected was yet another version of that tiresome verse of Mr. Bilbo's -- and soon had a fire burning at the entrance to the dell.

"You promised a _cheerful_ song," said Sam, when Frodo showed no sign of letting up. His notion of cheerfulness mostly involved comforts of the obvious sort such as goose down mattresses, pints of mulled wine, and steaming steak and kidney puddings, but since he was waiting for the fire to settle before popping the link of sausages into the pan he was in the mood for a frivolous entertainment. The sky had deepened to cobalt aside from a faint glow on the horizon no wider than a strip of lemon rind, the kettle had begun to sputter, and if Frodo wasn't as easy a travelling companion as Sam had expected, much could be blamed on the mushroom. "If it's not inconvenient."

"So I did," replied Frodo. He unfurled his bed roll and, drawing out his pipe, sat down with his legs crossed at the ankle. As far as Sam could tell by his relaxed posture, he was amused rather than inconvenienced.

"I take it you're not partial to _The Road Goes Ever On_? No, well -- Bilbo's creativity suffered a decline in later years but his bath songs were highly spiced to the end."

Sam relished a glass of green ginger wine at Yuletide. He seasoned the Oatbarton hotpot too liberally to suit the Gaffer and dosed his weed with cinnamon. That his old master might have been of a similarly warm temperament had never occurred to him. He thought about it as he sliced the pie and set the sausages each by each in the cast iron pan, and the more he thought the less he liked the idea that a hobbit of one hundred and eleven would sing rude ballads in his bath.

"There's no denying that a pinch of mace can be the making of a veal and ham pie," he said, "but the hard-boiled egg at the centre is the tastiest part."

He had been remiss in not adding a half-dozen of rough-skinned potatoes to his pack. He could have roasted them among the coals or fried them with the sausages. If Tighfield Russets were to be had in Nettlebed at this time of year...

"Taters," he said, half to himself. "Yellow onion, sharp white cheese from Tookbank. _Marjoram_."

"Sam?"

"Mr. Bilbo's bath-songs are his own business," said Sam, too occupied with the fire to meet Frodo's enquiring look. "My Gaffer lets wind that can be heard clear down the Row. He well-nigh blew the door off Daddy Twofoot's woodshed t'other week. _Hear all, see all, and hold thi peace_, as my Nan would have said."

Frodo's pipe hiccupped a spurt of smoke.

"In that case," he said, brushing an invisible strand of Old Toby from his breeches, "I'll have a shot at _Easy and Slow_, sung to the tune of _Courting in the Kitchen_. Bilbo's off-the-cuff versification will seem a damp squib when compared to Master Hamfast's morning exercises, if you'll pardon the expression, but you may find it stimulating on a chill night."

He cleared his throat and began in a light tenor,

"A servant bold from Needlehole  
Whose attributes were striking  
Displayed a disregard for dress  
Much to his master's liking --

His threadbare breeches failed to hide  
The size of his ambition,  
And bets were made on when he might  
Effect an intromission.

But since the master's pedigree  
Was famed throughout the shire  
Few lads there were who had the balls  
To dominate the squire.

Oh, gentle listener, shed a tear  
For youths of high position  
Who, spite of rank and lineage  
Take pleasure in submission.

One morning by the potting bench -- "

"He _never_!" exclaimed Sam, unable to contain his startlement under the guise of frowning at the sausages and unwilling to hear more of servants with outsized ambitions. Mr. Bilbo had spent too much time in distant lands consorting with dwarves in barrels.

"Indeed he did," answered Frodo nimbly. "Frequently, as it happens, and I but a young lad. Shall I help with that sausage? It's getting away from you."

"No sausage can withstand the wielder of a well-forged tool," said Sam, waving his fork over the pan as if he were about to conjure one of Gandalf's dwarf-candles. "Threadbare britches, my eye! Stop your mouth with a slice o' that pie while I finish these beggars. When we've done, I've summat to show you."

"I'll note your disapproval in the private edition of _Bath-house Ballads_," said Frodo, and tucked into the pie with so many signs of appreciation for Sam's culinary know-how that it was impossible to question him on the whys and wherefores of _Courting in the Kitchen_.

Sam had expected a rebuke for his ill-tempered outburst but Frodo was apparently little disposed to pursue the matter. He neither hummed, nor sang, nor said a word regarding the crisp skin of the pork sausages, the excellence of the pie, or the crumbliness of the jam tarts. He ate his supper in a silence as profound as Gaffer Gamgee's and, when he had scraped the last smear of hard-boiled egg from his plate, he lay back against the alder roots and resumed the smoking of his pipe.

A quarter hour passed in this manner, during which Sam considered the chances of a well-born lad surrendering his all to one whose ancestors had grown mangold wurzels. He scoured the dishes as he considered because night was coming on and he had yet to decide whether Frodo would notice if their blankets were closer than the limited space required. Sam was used to sharing a bed with Halfred but the mattress in the master's room at Bag End was wider than Number 3's parlour and seldom shared with anyone, or so the common talk at the _Ivy Bush_ had it.

"Nose-pokers," he said aloud, and made a great clatter with the frying pan to register his opinion of hobbits who couldn't mind their own fish.

"I shan't appreciate whatever it is," said Frodo, opening one eye and squinting down the stem of his pipe, "if you don't show it to me while I'm awake."

"Sir?"

"You promised _something_ once we'd finished supper. I've been cudgelling my brains to think what it might be but I'm afraid you have me baffled."

Sam supposed that it was easier to be baffled if you had fallen asleep after an unforeseen encounter with a mushroom and were reluctant to admit that months of study had knocked the stuffing out of your get-up-and-go.

"My Nan," he said, choosing two straight branches from the stack of unused kindling, "won a trophy at the Tighfield and District Agricultural Exhibition of 1352. She'd have won the following year too only she sprained her wrist digging post-holes."

"A formidable hobbit in all respects," said Frodo, as he knocked the dottle from his pipe. "How did she win?"

"I'll tell you in a jiffy," replied Sam and reached into his knapsack for the packet of sweetmeats which Marigold had made the previous night. "If you'll take one of those sticks we can -- "

"Fend off trolls in the night? Face down a pack of wolves with a tinder box and a few stray pieces of firewood?" Frodo picked up the longest branch and flourished it at Sam as though he were testing the strength of a new fire poker. "I regret lending Bilbo's collection of dwarvish ironmongery to the Mathom-house. I might have found room in my pack for a --"

Sam clucked his tongue.

"There are no trolls in the Shire, Mr. Frodo, and no wolves west of the Misty Mountains. Harding sets great store by Perry-the-Winkle's tales but I'm not easily bamboozled. And if you don't stop wagging that thing about you'll put someone's eye out." He unwrapped the brown paper and shoved one of the battered lumps onto the point of Frodo's stick. "That'll keep you busy."

"Busy doing what?" asked Frodo, squeezing the object between his thumb and forefinger. "I presided at the Michel Delving Benevolent Society's Summer Fair last Overlithe and if someone had submitted a dumpling on a stick we'd have bust our buttons. Excuse the vulgarism."

"Pish-tosh," said Sam. "It's a marshmallow. Nan's folk came from Sarn Ford where they grew mallows for physic. When Nan married Roper Gamgee, she brought a half-bushel of mallow root in her pony-trap. It went like hot cakes."

"I don't need physicking, or no more than any hobbit who spends the winter in quiet contemplation of his books. Am I to infer that you were about to foist a purgative on me without my say-so? I'd have been kept very busy indeed."

"Not half as busy as my Nan's egg beater," answered Sam, piercing one with the second stick and holding it to the fire. "I lugged these marshmallows from Hobbiton as a surprise on our first night even though a pair of wool stockings would have served you better. Just place your stick alongside o' mine, and you'll see summat to make your jaw drop."

"Aunt Dora wears baize stockings but I've never -- Bless me!" exclaimed Frodo, as his marshmallow blossomed into a flaming torch and began to sag on the branch like an old cow's udder.

"Mind your thumml-teas," said Sam, and he snatched the charred mass from the heat with a practised wrist, hanging on to it for a moment while the sugar cooled before offering it to Frodo. "There's a knack to marshmallows."

"So I gather. _Yours_ is the colour of a ripe cobnut. However -- " He peeled back the crisp cocoon and dipped his tongue in the sticky filling. "Mine is as satisfying despite being overdone. Are trolls attracted to marshmallows? I should think they would be."

In Sam's opinion, a troll that had its own best interests at heart would toss the marshmallows on the rubbish tip and make a bee-line for his master. A troll who, at this very instant, might be perched on the crest of the limestone ledge would be enthralled by Frodo's curved lips, his willful chin and the mocking slant of his eyebrows.

"Not as I know of," he said, positioning two marshmallows in tight proximity on the end of his rod. "Hobbits are juicier. _Bake 'em, toast 'em, fry and roast 'em!_, as Mr. Bilbo might have said. There's naught like a nice bit of crackling."

"Some of us would differ," replied Frodo, with a stealthy glance at Sam's makeshift tackle. "Furthermore, Bilbo's goblin song was fabricated as neither goblins nor trolls are able to carry a tune. In fact, they made rude gestures with their toasting-forks and indulged in low jibes."

"Did they?" Sam turned the marshmallows over the flames till the skins were a match for Bandobras Took's riding leathers, then tugged one from the alder branch and handed it to Frodo, his fingertips accidentally brushing the inside of his master's wrist. "The dirty dogs."

"Quite." Frodo averted his gaze to the barely discernible glint of the nameless stream, overhung now with stars instead of bridewort and willows. Something as light as the trailing edge of a dust web touched the curls on Sam's neck as he admired the length of Frodo's lashes and the pugnacious set of his jaw.

"And although goblins and trolls have a preference for dwarves," Frodo continued, drawing the tails of his cloak around him and tucking his feet out of sight, "they might experiment with a plump hobbit or two when provender is scarce. I agree that Perry-the-Winkle wasn't the most dependable of witnesses, but if the scent of caramelised sugar were to reach whatever lurks beyond the range of our firelight --"

"Aye?"

"Wouldn't we convey a more formidable appearance if we sat close together?" said Frodo, catching Sam's eye across the half-empty marshmallow packet. "Your hat is likely to scatter the wits of boggarts, knockers, and puddlefeet. It does mine."

"'Tis," said Sam, stroking the brim with an affection undimmed by the taunts of Miller Sandyman. Yet a tall hat might be the very thing to spark the curiosity of a wandering troll who was in the market for a stout dwarf. The Gaffer had not been the only one to observe that Sam would have made a fine addition to Mr. Bilbo's dwarven company. "But, sir --"

"I'll raise my hood" said Frodo, in a tone that brooked no argument. He moved the remains of their afters to one side so that he could sit with his grey-clad shoulder by Sam's russet one, his feet stretched towards the fire. "Shall I sing another verse to frighten the trolls?"

"There are no trolls in the Shire, sir."

"Of course not, but I haven't told you about Bilbo's last song. Let me see..."

And if the troll who had already taken note of Frodo's willful chin had descended for a closer inspection of this singular marvel, he would have been vanquished by the strains of _Blow the Candle In_ mounting through the night air in a happy conjunction of two voices.


	5. In Which Frodo and Sam Find Room at the Inn

"Bilbo was right about weary feet," said Frodo, pausing to untangle his cloak from a bramble vine and smooth the snags along the soiled hem. "I hope for the chance to tell him so one day. Was there ever such a dismal prospect?"

"Empty beer kegs at the _Green Dragon_," replied Sam with alacrity, although he experienced a tremor of unease as the sentence slipped its moorings. He saw nothing to fault in the ragged slopes of yellow gorse or the precipitous manner in which the path had begun its descent to the vale below. Some parts of the Shire were meant for potatoes and other parts were best-suited to heather and whin. "Touch wood."

"If you can find any." Frodo unrolled Bilbo's map and spread out the soiled parchment on a convenient boulder. "Were I a less confident hobbit, I would doubt the existence of Nettlebed. I'm prepared to take your word for the chippings, but as to the likelihood of our finding lodgings in their midst --"

Sam's desire to have a gander at the hotchpotch of paths and hamlets in coloured ink was offset by a taut bladder and a suspicion that elevenses was about to pass unmarked. He rested his hand on the Southfarthing and studied the crease between Nobottle and Tighfield as if he could fill the uncharted expanse with a snug hostelry and a commodious bathing facility. A stiff breeze lifted his hat brim, combing the hair over his forehead into a dry tangle.

"I can't say," he answered after a moment's hesitation. "If we'd gone by the common thoroughfare, we could have put our heads to the pillow at the _Half Butt Inn_."

"I'm told the beer in Tighfield is 'fair to middling', said Frodo, his eyes on the map as he traced the Great East Road and its tributaries with an idle finger. "A fellow I won't name swore that he wouldn't rattle his bones from Hobbiton to Gammidge for the sake of it. And -- do you know -- I'm inclined to believe him."

"Not enough head for my taste," said Sam and jerked up his collar against the weather. The sunshine had brought a seasonable warmth to the uplands but the cloud-shadows which raced across the valley were a reminder that winter was less distant here than it was in the garden at Bag End where the tomatoes might well produce a flower or three if Fosco Proudfoot didn't kill them with overwatering.

"There rarely is in the remoter villages." Frodo uncurled the North Moors, brushing away a few biscuit crumbs from yesterday's luncheon with his sleeve. "This fellow whose tastes are similar to mine didn't mention that Gamwich is so far removed from the nearest market town as to be _off the map_. If the soil is poor, how did the Gamgees come to be conversant with potatoes?"

"The soil's deep along the Little Trickle and Hamfast of Gamwich -- not my Gaffer, if you understand me, but my Gaffer's Gaffer's --"

"I have some knowledge of your longfather-tree," said Frodo, folding his arms and sitting down on the Northfarthing.

"My dad would be chuffed to bits." Sam threw a shy glance at his master. "Any road -- Hamfast the Elder bought a pound of parsnip seed from a smallholder in Tuckborough on the off-chance that a frost-hardy root would help to better his family after the Days of Dearth. That first autumn's harvest yielded fifteen hundredweight of parsnips, so Hamfast gave up oats and pease to become the greatest root farmer in the district. Wiseman and Hob the Roper moved to Tighfield, o'course, but when Old Gammidgy, or Hob as he then was, married Rowan Greenhand -- a scion grafted on wild stock --"

"Bilbo thought well of the Greenhands. Do you mean to say --"

"I don't mean anything, sir. Everyone knows that Holman of Hobbiton's wife went to Deephallow in search of pudding grass and strayed too near the Old Forest. Nine months later she bore a green-eyed child and that was Rowan, my great-grandmother. Howsomever--"

"I trust your story has a point," observed Frodo evenly, as his hands disappeared into the depths of his coat pockets. "It's colder than a boggart's tit up here."

"It does, sir, begging your pardon." Sam considered shuffling his feet in a customary show of deference but he was loath to draw attention to the luxuriant foothair which Frodo had remarked upon the previous day. It could stand a wash after two days of muck and mire. He wiggled his toes. "If you ask a Gamgee about taters --"

"I should expect to be told the history of parsnip cultivation in the Westfarthing and the vagaries of Holman the Elder's wife. Yes, I see." He slid from the boulder and, with a final irritated look at the unforthcoming parchment, rolled up the map and thrust it beneath the flap of his pack. "'It's in the blood' would have sufficed."

"'Tisn't," said Sam. "_A strong back for a sturdy root_ is what my Gaffer taught us. If skill were bred in the bone I wouldn't have 'prenticed for eight years nor would Ted Sandyman spend his days next to a pint glass in the _Green Dragon_ 'cos he can't tell one end of a flour sack from the other."

"That may be," said Frodo, sneezing into his handkerchief. "All the same, you might have developed an attachment to cabbage or vegetable marrows. Instead, you were led inexorably to the fingerling potato just as I was burdened with an aversion to gorse. And while I'm not vain of my appearance, in spite of having what Lobelia calls 'whole rooms devoted to clothes', if we don't reach Nettlebed in short order my nose will be unfit for modest company. Aunt Dora Baggins is a virtual recluse during the spring months." He swept the corners of his cloak about his calves and, before Sam had agreed that a wardrobe stuffed with embroidered waistcoats was a mishap for which no one could be held answerable, set off down the steep path at a jaunty pace. "Come along, my dear, and mind the brambles."

Sam had minded the brambles for several miles, and the prickly maze of heather too, when his thoughts had not been wholly bent upon the equal attraction of Frodo's well-formed ankles. He had noted the pungent scent of gorse and the bumblebees, as boldly striped as one of his own buttermint humbugs, plundering the furled golden blossoms. He had listened to an account of Bilbo's adventures on the journey home with an ear cocked for the call of a meadow pipit or the sudden rush of a red grouse breaking cover. But his eyes, captivated though they were by this alien landscape, returned at intervals to the loose brown curls enticingly displayed against the high collar of his master's lawn shirt.

"One day," said Frodo, when the path had brought them to the remains of a ruined sheepfold below the western shoulder of the hill, "I'll ask how a ropewalk in Tighfield lured Wiseman Gamgee from the considerable charms of fifteen hundredweight of parsnips. This, however, is not that day."

"No, sir," said Sam, who felt that his great-great-grandfer had shown an unbeseeming recklessness of disposition for a Gamgee.

"But you mustn't think that I -- " Frodo scowled at the jagged outline of granite as if its aspect pained him. "You should know that I'm not indifferent to your family's situation. Shall we stop for elevenses?"

"I wouldn't say no to a breather," replied Sam, somewhat mollified by this further evidence of a long-standing connection between their two smials. The Gaffer had made a great fuss of the potato spade, the boiled wool waistcoat, the bottle of noxious liniment, and the hand-written note addressed to _Master Hamfast in gratitude for his valuable advice_. He would be no less pleased that Frodo was indeed a chip of the old block '_in more'n looks_.' Sam stepped behind the fieldstone wall to conceal his joy at the happy accident and deftly undid his buttons.

"I suppose you'll tell me --" Frodo met his gaze over the weathered stones. "-- that if it weren't for the superfluity of gorse, my yellow wading jacket would be a drab shade of brown."

"Wading jacket?" asked Sam, screwing up his eyes in a fruitless attempt to recall whether he had seen Frodo in a bathing costume of any description. "The old master's clothes were made at Bedgberry's Bespoke in Whitfurrows. There's no dye gorse in that neighbourhood. Yarrow, maybe, or red-gilled webcaps. It's a pity 'cos --"

If Frodo succumbed to a fit of sneezing, which he might well do given the pinched expression about his nostrils, he would miss the tell-tale blush threatening to engulf Sam's downcast face. He would also, the Baggins temperament being what it was, forget the wading jacket unless he made a note of it.

"Go on," said Frodo in a preoccupied voice as he exchanged the crumpled ball of linen for a jar of camphor ointment. He sniffed at the greenish contents warily then daubed a fingerful above his lips.

"Halfred fell into a gorse bush one summer and couldn't sit down to his tea for a week," finished Sam and refastened his buttons in the uncomfortable awareness that a cold blue stare was fixed on the brim of his hat.

"I won't be diverted by some unrelated nonsense about your family." Frodo sloughed off his pack with a groan and collapsed onto the turf, looking for all the world as though he had carried a hod of bricks from Sackville to Oatbarton. "You were on the verge of an apothegm."

Sam ought to have denied a knowledge of apothegms or declared an abiding fondness for gorse or failed to hear the implied question but it was hard to gather his thoughts while Frodo's cheeks were so becomingly flushed and his breeches so snugly fashioned.

"When gorse is out of bloom, kissing is out of season," he whispered, and would have added an habitual _'as my old dad says'_ if his master hadn't already uttered a pert comment on Gaffer Gamgee's pithy phrases.

"And that would be -- ?"

"Never," said Sam. "Or almost never, 'cept in -- "

"So if I were somewhere other than Whitfurrows -- " Frodo craned his neck to examine the tussocks of coarse grass and the lichen-stained rocks lying in disordered heaps, "-- here, for example, as insalubrious as it is -- I could kiss whomever I liked from January through December and no one would think me peculiar?"

Sam pursed his lips. "Peculiar is as peculiar does, sir."

"You sound doubtful," said Frodo, blowing his nose into a clean hankie before hoisting himself upright against the nearest stone. He crossed his legs at the ankles. "Well, if you should happen to be by when I fancy a kiss, I'll ask your opinion first. Now where did I put the pickled walnuts?"

That Frodo, the most determined bachelor in the Westfarthing, should be the sort of hobbit who would ever prefer a kiss to a three volume edition of _The Gentlehobbit's Calling_ was such a dazzling possibility that Sam was unable to discover whether he would be able to state an opinion even if the circumstances required one.

"You needn't ask," he said, politely removing his hat and arranging it on the sheepfold wall as if he were in the front passage at Bag End. "About the walnuts that is. They're in my knapsack. Let me --"

There were a number of things in his knapsack that would spoil if kept until supper and when he had found the walnuts and the beetroot and laid them beside what Frodo chose to call 'sundries', the blue gingham napkin which he had taken from the sideboard at Number 3 was only just big enough to accommodate the assortment.

"Perhaps we shouldn't bother with lunch," said Frodo. He had discarded the handkerchief and was glancing now at Sam and now at the condiments and cheeses arrayed in warlike posture on the sloping ground between them. At that moment he was not in the least like Mr. Bilbo, whose eyes had never rested on his gardener with more than amused tolerance nor, as far as the village was concerned, on anyone at all with a heat so blistering as to melt the copper buttons on Sam's coat.

"Lunch is at one, sir. This is -- " Sam wondered if it was less a question of finding the wherewithal to state his opinion than of being certain Frodo had asked for it. What appeared as an opportunity to a fellow with an empty stomach might well be simply the reflected shimmer of the camphor ointment in eyes that were naturally inclined to darken with --

"--elevenses," he faltered.

"I _know_ what it is," replied Frodo testily. "It's half an hour of rough walking that would have brought us closer to Nettlebed if I hadn't conceded to your stomach's demand for potted cheese."

"I didn't --"

"Of course you did. I heard it quite distinctly as we descended the hill." Frodo crumbled a morsel of Tuckborough Blue onto a savoury biscuit and licked his fingers. "No matter. We shall make up the lost time by skipping lunch. In any case, unless your pack is cut from the same cloth as the fool's bottomless wallet, a few dry crusts and an apple ring will be all that's left in it. Mine is no better."

There was a remnant of the bacon flitch given to Gaffer Gamgee by Farmer Cotton in return for Sam's help with the hedge-laying and there was a measure of porridge oats that his master had refused at breakfast because he had eaten too many marshmallows the night before. But as Frodo would not stand to be contradicted twice in five minutes it was foolish to mention them and Sam lowered himself to the grass with a half-hearted objection to the missing of meals. He was glad to swap lunch for elevenses as that part of him which had yearned for vittles was now filled with a disquiet that not even beetroot could calm. He had something to say that was best said soonish and if Frodo were to be knocked off his pins as a result then a derelict sheepfold was a more fitting place to revive him than a tavern at Nettlebed or a communal tent at Gammidge.

"I told an untruth," he said, and wished that he were at home in the potting shed with _The Gardener's Calendar of Ornamental Trees and Shrubs_ and a pint of dry stout.

"I'm deeply shocked," said Frodo, cracking open the last bottle of ginger beer. "An untruth about what?"

"Why Harding frowns on arguments." Sam glowered at the sweet pickles rather than be stared down by a pair of blue peepers. "Dad said I mustn't worrit you."

"A Baggins would never be worried by two unclothed hobbits tussling in a sweat house," answered Frodo. "As for me, I can promise not to fight anyone. I admit to the occasional urge to thwack Lotho Sackville-Baggins but fisticuffs isn't my sport of choice. If Harding has some other reason -- " He pulled out his notebook for the first time since their luncheon by the copper beech and raised an expectant eyebrow.

Sam sighed. Harding would be cross with his Gamgee relations if the family secret became a chapter in _Natural History and Antiquities of the Westfarthing_ by Frodo Baggins Esq. He would very likely disown them and the name of Samwise would be erased from the Gammidge longfather-tree forever.

"It's Knocky-Bob," he said, with the kind of resignation Bullroarer Took must have felt when confronted by Golfimbul at the Battle of Greenfields.

"What is?" asked Frodo as he flattened out the notebook at a blank page.

"When I was a nipper, someone at the Gathering dropped a lantern near the privy. The stack of seed catalogues caught light and the sweat house might have caught, too, only --"

"I hope you weren't inside it," said Frodo, handing Sam the ginger beer and a plate of oddments.

"We all were -- thank'ee, sir, I'm as dry as a fish -- but right after Harding brought out the whisks there was a thump below the sweat house and a cry of _Ware fire!_ We fled in a trice and left our clothes behind in the changing room. Then Andy, whose ropewalk suffered a fire in '64, had us form a hobbit chain and we shifted water from the duck pond till the flames were dowsed."

"How did you shift it?"

"With our hats." Sam cast a fond look at the mound of shapeless felt on the stones above his head. "Anson crawled beneath the plank floor in search of the fellow who shouted but there was no sign of him beyond a muddle of footprints in the dirt."

"It was the hobbit who started the fire, I dare say." Frodo had lost interest in elevenses and was trying, in the brisk wind that eddied around the sheepfold, to light his briar without burning his fingers. "He won't be so careless a second time."

"It can't have been," said Sam, communing with the beetroot for a long minute while his master murmured _'ouch'_ and _'bother'_ and _'blast this weather'._ "The feet were shod."

"Do you know --" said Frodo, and puffed a little too vigorously on his pipe. "Your anecdote reminds me of the elderly retainer in _The Bogey Beast of Rushock Bog_."

"Who?" said Sam, although he had a dim recollection of some thrilling incidents in the exploits of Gilden Smiles which he had missed when the second humbug went down the wrong way. By the time he had got it sorted, the escaped goat-napper was dead and Smiles had enjoyed a chop at the inn with his servant, Gobo.

"He complicates an otherwise straightforward story just as you --" Frodo made a circular motion with his pipestem. "Were you wool-gathering yesterday morning or did I omit that passage?"

"I was --"

"Travelling to Needlehole by way of Woody End," replied Frodo. "_You_ said 'it's Knocky-Bob' and _I_ asked 'what is?', as one does, and then you charged headlong into a tale with more branches than your family tree, never pausing to consider how keen I am to hear why Master Hamfast is concerned for my peace of mind. Out with it!"

Sam hadn't wanted to come out with it until he had prepared the ground, raked it, given it a thorough watering, dibbed a hole, and planted the seedling. If he had come out with it earlier -- _put the cart afore the horse_, as they said in the village -- Frodo would have complained about his answering the question arseholes to breakfast time. You couldn't please some folk.

"A gnome lives under the sweat house, sir. Harding calls him Knocky-Bob."

Sam didn't feel it incumbent on him to explain why a gnome would protect the Gammidge sweat house or to express his fears that a Baggins mightn't meet with the approval of Knocky-Bob. It was clear from Frodo's thoughtful air that a number of questions would be asked as soon as the pink had returned to his cheeks.

"Have a pickle," said Sam, pushing the jar towards the far edge of the napkin. "It'll do you a mort o' good."

"Not in this instance," said Frodo, and ate the remainder of his cheese and biscuits as he would if he were alone in the study at Bag End, leaving Sam to count buttercups with an appetite ruined by worry. Now and again he would turn a leaf in his notebook but the indelible pencil stayed in his breast pocket.

"You're sure that no one else in Gammidge wears boots?" Frodo continued when the plate was clean and he had relit his pipe. "The Stoors of the Marish --"

"It's seventy leagues from Deephallow to the Westmarch. Harding's not seen a boot nor a wisp of chin hair in all his born days."

"Well, then. I must believe him." He inspected Sam with less heat but a great deal of curiosity. "Mustn't I."

"The thing is --" Sam coughed by way of apology. "Not a one of us has had a glimpse of Knocky-Bob 'cept for Harding and _he's_ addled, or so my Gaffer says." He leaned across the gingham cloth and bent his lips to Frodo's ear. "Only at Number 3 though 'cos Bob might curdle the milk if he heard."

Frodo lowered his pipe.

"Have I misunderstood you?" he asked.

"How's that, sir?" Sam eased back on his heels to keep from touching what didn't belong to a gardener's son with mended linens, or not yet at any rate.

Frodo tapped the cover of his notebook as if to show that he had jotted down every word of Sam's explanation or would do once his elevenses had settled.

"The aspect of this nonsensical tale that _worries_ me is the possibility of your giving credence to it," he said. "I'm fairly certain you don't and neither does your Gaffer, but that remark about curdled milk has made me mistrust your judgment. Nonetheless, if you'd rather I didn't argue at the door of the changing room --"

"I'm saying naught," said Sam, his eyes on the notebook. "A fellow can stir up Knocky-Bob quicker than a forge fire scorches a feather. I'd have told you sooner but --"

"Master Hamfast would have thrashed you." Frodo stretched out on his side and regarded the beetroot with disinterest. "Eat your lunch, Sam. If the inn at Nettlebed is at all like the _Ivy Bush_, the cook will have gone by eight."

Eight o'clock was a long way from a few ounces of potted cheese and farther than Sam had thought it would be at first breakfast. He had lain in his bed at sunrise while Frodo brewed tea, watching the light pick out his master's features, the white front of a rumpled shirt, and the slender hand describing an arc across the outspread map. The distance implied by the hand's motion had seemed a trifle when the steam was nudging the lid of the kettle and the faint savour of last night's sausage still lingered in the pan, but it had proven, in the course of the morning, to be greater than that of the expedition which had brought Mr. Bilbo home after a year's absence. Sam had hoped to be away from the garden for ten days at the utmost, but Frodo's boundless delight in their surroundings was turning the journey into an endless ramble in search of mathoms. They might never reach Gammidge. They might, like Mr. Bilbo, be taken for dead. And far from the smial's tunnels being filled with dragon gold by Thursday sennight, the library shelves would bear the weight of a screech owl feather, a snail shell almost as large as Sam's fire flint, a beetle greener than a hobbit's weskit, and a lily sketched with coloured pencils and pressed among the leaves of the ever-present notebook. Sam had only just dissuaded his master from uprooting an apple seedling to plant in the Baggins orchard. If Bilbo had been similarly vexed by irregular mealtimes and troublesome companions on his way to the Lonely Mountain, Sam didn't want adventures. What he wanted was Frodo in a lather on the drawing-room sofa, pork collops for supper, and a chance at those tomato seedlings before Fosco Proudfoot drowned them.

"And the wind is rising," said Frodo. "You don't suppose --"

Sam lifted his face to the tall clouds massing above the hills northwards, the grey net cast from their undersides swallowing up the last scrap of brightness between earth and sky.

"It may do," he said and delved into his food with no more than a hint of disquiet. "I don't mind a thunder crack or a bit o' wet."

"The wolves that came _ravening out of the North in bitter white winters_ must have looked very much like that," answered Frodo, humming a verse of _The Fatal Snowstorm_ as he studied the heavens. "Wouldn't you think?" he added when Sam, who had spilt a crumb down his front and was busy fetching it out, ignored his pointing finger.

Sam spared a glance for the clouds in question but he could tell by his master's impatient air that he should stow the rest of the cheese where it would do the most good or suffer the consequences later.

"Naw," he said. "That's Farmer Bracebrigg's swallow-bellied pig on the left. I can see him plain as plain and the sty beyond him. I'll finish the beetroot then, shall I? Waste not, want --"

"I intended a metaphor," said Frodo appearing greatly put out, but whether it was the aftermath of the sneezing fit or the approaching storm that had made him bristle was hard to determine. "Are you on speaking terms with _all_ of the livestock in Bywater?"

"I'm fond of swine." He would have mentioned the pig's theft of a custard tart but Frodo was likelier to give the yarn a favourable hearing once they had a roof over their heads and a bed under them. Knocky-Bob had all but laid him low and no wonder. A gnome of uneven temper was a singularity in the Westfarthing.

"I don't see a pig or a sty," said Frodo. "I see a reason to be off the instant we've gathered the dishes. Why dilly-dally in the teeth of a storm?"

"Ahem," observed Sam around a hurried mouthful of biscuit. It was less than he had meant to say but Frodo obviously took it as agreement for he dragged his pack towards him and untied the drawstring.

"This thing-a-merry is heavier than it was last night. Is that possible?"

"What have you got in it, sir, if you don't --" Sam cleared his throat.

"Two notebooks," replied Frodo, holding up the requisite number of fingers. "One is bound in maroon buckram; the other you've seen. Specimen jars and a bottle of preserving liquid. A box of watercolours -- I thought an illustration of Gammidge would better become the parlour than an etching of the Hill at Midsummer. After all, it's your smial as much as --" He reddened.

"Naked hobbits in the parlour?" said Sam, unsure of his bearings.

"Goodness, no. The sweat house at sunset with two figures quarrelling near the entrance. In addition -- a spyglass, a pocket sundial, a draughts board, a tin of fish hooks in case there are carp in the pond, a --"

"A draughts board?"

"I was Buckland draughts champion in 1387," said Frodo, examining his nails as though they were unfamiliar to him. "Do you play?"

"Not so's you'd notice. Maybe you could -- " Sam hesitated. Frodo had acquired several of Bilbo's oddities since coming to live at Bag End, among which was an inclination to diffidence when it suited his purpose; if he had brought the draughts board with the express intent of giving lessons he would never acknowledge it. "That is, if it's not a bother."

"By no means," replied Frodo and stuffed the pickle crock next to what looked uncannily like an umbrella. "What else can we do when you're not playing at _Suck and Blow_ with Rose Cotton? Evenings in Gammidge must be deadly dull."

As Sam had neglected to tell his master about the sleeping arrangements and as the amusements to be found in a shared tent involved belching contests or worse, it was the wrong time to reveal that eight lads in close quarters were seldom dull.

"'Twas only the once," he said. "My buttocks --"

"Wouldn't survive a second attempt," said Frodo, clambering to his feet. "Help me with this knapsack, there's a good fellow. Sore buttocks will be the least of our worries unless the wind changes. As Bilbo might have said if he'd had an ounce of hobbit sense, _he who hesitates, regrets_. We'll be in Nettlebed by supper, I'll warrant, dry shod and thirsting for a pint of beer."

_Oh dear_, thought Sam. _I should have told him._

 

~~***~~

 

Sam regretted many things before nightfall, but the shuttered windows and smokeless chimneys of Nettlebed were the last straw to his much-abused good nature. The rain had begun innocently enough with a drop or two as they crossed the road to Long Cleeve, where steep hills of gorse and heather yielded to countryside which looked to his aggrieved stomach like the soft folds of a batter pudding. In less than five minutes it had progressed to a squall and thence to a torrential outburst that would have filled a pair of dwarf boots if he had been so unlucky as to own such a thing. When they finally stood in twilight, gazing down upon what ought to have been the welcome sight of bright inns and teeming pavements, not an inch of Sam was dry except for the crown of his well-furnished head. The village was a dim smudge in the near distance, a clutter of tall houses which presented a singular aspect to one accustomed to the low rooves and snug smials of Hobbiton. In place of the stone bridge over the Water there was a rubble causeway spanning a sluggish beck and a solitary plank for those who feared to wet their feet during the winter months.

"Anson Roper had a point," said Frodo, throwing back his hood. He paid no attention to the trickle of rain-water that was currently wending its way behind his shirt collar but Sam took a moment to glance at its slow tortuous path across the curve of pale cheek and the unarguably stubborn jawline.

"Sir?"

"_Nowt good comes out o' Nettlebed 'cept the stone from Coolscar Quarry_. Where would a Baggins build his hole, I ask you?"

"The district has no gentlehobbits 'sides a third cousin of Cotman Cotton," said Sam, who thought a village without a Hill or a smial of noteworthy magnificence beneath his notice. "He bought a hide of land in Lesser Nobottle and stuck fast when everyone moved to Nettlebed. If he's there still he'd be nigh on six score and ten which is --"

"Yes, it is," said Frodo, and tugged at Sam's sleeve to draw him into the road. "I may be wet through to my skin but I fancy a pint directly. Wring me out and hang me up to dry once I've had my fill."

"Umph," Sam managed, although he was pinned to the spot by a vision of Frodo doing the backstroke in his underthings while someone who knew how to peg out laundry waited on the riverbank with a length of rope. Swimming was a dangerous business, of course, but there was no harm in it if a fellow had his servant by to guard his safety.

"Nettlebed --" he began, after he had grappled with the relative merits of the clothes horse, the privet hedge, or a plain expanse of level ground as sites on which to spread Frodo's washing. "I meant to --"

"Come on," said Frodo, grasping Sam's hand. "Whatever it is will keep until supper."

Sam was certain sure it wouldn't but he tramped off along the last hundred yards of beaten footpath to the unfenced causeway and the street beyond it, well-contented by the warmth of his master's fingers curled in a protective arc around his own.

"The village is darker than a dwarf's lunchbox," said Frodo as they arrived in the square to the clattering accompaniment of their two sticks on the limestone setts. He spun on his heels first in one direction and then in the other, peering up at the high timber-framed shop fronts for signs of occupation. "Where are the ale-sodden villagers, the sounds of merry-making, the aromas of spitted lamb and onion sauce?"

"Nettlebed--" Sam began a second time but just as Frodo turned towards him with undoubted interest he was cut short by a guttural wheeze from his right that quickly shaped itself into a feathered hat and a diminutive suit of shabby clothes.

"Hullo," said Frodo in the voice he would have used if Lobelia Sackville-Baggins had stolen Belladonna Took's silver-plated sugar tongs. "And you are --?"

"Rolo the Beadle, yer honour," replied the stranger, doffing his muffin cap. "_'Ale-sodden villagers'_, ye said, and _'merry-makin''_, if I heerd aright. Show me a fellow what's misbehavin' and I'll clap 'im in the lockholes afore --"

"I was remarking to my friend on the notable _lack_ of drunkenness," interrupted Frodo in milder tones. He gestured at the empty street and closed shops. "A lack of _anything_, if it's not an impertinence to say so. Where might a pair of thirsty travellers misbehave in private?"

The beadle sighed as though the burden of office was too much to bear for a hobbit of three foot in height. His face crumpled.

"None o' that, yer worship, or I'll lodge a complaint against the two of ye," he said, appearing to think it an imposition on his good nature. "For aidin' and abettin'."

"I'm flattered," said Frodo. He placed a hand on Sam's shoulder. "Have I ever, in all my years at Bag End, aided or abetted?"

"No, sir, but Sandyman told Olo Proudfoot that you helped Mr. Bilbo hide his --"

"Thank you, Sam." Frodo smiled at the beadle. "The Miller took a dislike to me for reasons which I won't trouble you with. How _does_ one lodge a complaint in Nettlebed?"

"Shirriff comes at harvest," offered the beadle, when a thorough examination of his hat band had failed to produce a booklet of instructions for put upon shire officials. "I shouldn't care to cross him, if I was ye."

"Indeed not," answered Frodo, with a solemn nod. He loosened his grip but not before giving Sam's shoulder a squeeze that said as clearly as words, _leave this to me, you daft pillock._ "While you decide whether to cite us for merry-making, my friend and I will wait at the inn. Could you recommend --"

"There's _The Dry Bob_ yonder." The beadle jerked his chin at the village horse trough and a parchment windowpane behind it through which a faint glow might be discerned by someone of a fanciful temperament.

"Dear me," said Frodo, taking a step closer. The sign above the door, or what part of it could be seen in the fading light, portrayed a disconsolate hobbit clutching an oddly-fashioned glass vessel. "Not so _very_ dry, I hope."

"Lesser _No_bottle," Sam muttered into his collar and observed a brief but respectful silence. "I meant to --"

Frodo covered his eyes with his hand. "The list of things you _mean_ to do, Samwise Gamgee, has reached the length of Gammer Garfits' tongue. What if we'd gone out of our way for a pint at _The Flying Beagle_ only to find that Bilbo's Grubb cousins were also teetottlers? In future --"

"Keep yer hair on," interjected the beadle, who had resumed his cap and was glancing back and forth between them as if he had never witnessed the like. "Ye'd think it was siller and gowd. What a to-do!"

"Queer as tits on a boar," said Sam, making no attempt to withhold his disapproval of the beadle's impudence. "And rude into the bargain."

"_All the world is queer save thee and me, and thou too art a little queer_," said Frodo with a wistful sigh that spoke of the suffering endured by a gentlehobbit of independent means and scholarly habits. "It's of no great moment provided _The Dry Bob_ has thick mattresses and abundant hot water. Master Rolo?"

The beadle frowned.

"Hot water is it? Ye can make do wi' a basin and sponge or go wi'out. As fer beds, _The Dry Bob_ has the finest straw north o' Michel Delving."

"No less than I would have expected," replied Frodo, and sketched a graceful bow despite the hulking knapsack. "My name is Frodo Baggins of Bag End in Hobbiton-under-Hill. If you lodge a complaint with the shirriff, give him my regards. We may not be here at harvest."

Since the shirriff held court at the _Green Dragon_ in Forelithe and was plentifully supplied with ale to ease the proceedings, a charge of abetting public drunkenness was likely to fall on deaf ears. The beadle, however, seemed unaccountably pleased to be in possession of Frodo's whereabouts.

"What sort o' name is Bag End?" he enquired, in an effort at small talk that ill became his crabbed manner.

"I'm afraid that Bungo Baggins' sense of humour got the better of his reason. The lane goes by our front garden and 'ends' at Bindbale Wood. As for the 'bag', you may draw your own conclusion. I don't wish to be cited twice in one night." Frodo looked away. "Come along, Sam. The sheets will be unaired and the fire cold but who can resist the spell of last year's straw?"

"Faugh," said the beadle. "Next you'll be wantin' a chockelet on yer piller."

"My _what_?" asked Frodo, but before he could launch into a lengthy discussion of Westfarthing dialects or, even worse, a lecture on courtesy that would end in the lockholes, Sam had grabbed his sleeve without apology and hauled him past the horse trough to the door of the inn.

"You're all in a pother, sir," said Sam, after he had wiped his feet on the scraper, though Frodo was nothing of the kind. He had already forgotten about the beadle and was admiring the door furniture while he waited for someone else to put a shoulder to the swollen oak. If the lantern in the porch had been lit he might have drawn a likeness of the bronze knocker. "A cup of tea and a savoury pie will set you to rights."

Sam turned the handle and the door sagged inwards, giving onto a low-ceilinged room strewn with straw where two ancient gaffers sat playing backgammon in a corner. The place reeked of boiled turnip and damp-rot, and a wretched mongrel searched the floor for tidbits under the gimlet eye of a landlord who was evidently a distant cousin of the beadle's.

"We'll not get them here," said Frodo and trod on Sam's foot in his haste to leave. "If linen sheets are out of the question, a night beneath the hedgerow --"

"You'd catch your death. Step in, sir, and mind the dog. Doubtless it won't be as bad as it looks."

Sam's knowledge of inns was limited, but he knew that a reputable establishment's fireplace should be a blaze of light, its portions generous enough to satisfy a single famished hobbit or several dozen, and its air redolent of hops. The crowd that filled the benches at the _Ivy Bush_ or the _Green Dragon_ of an evening would be scarcely visible for the clouds of pipeweed smoke, and it might, once the gaffers had left, indulge in a rousing chorus of _The Ale-Wife and Her Barrel._ A lad who fell sleep in his own kitchen and woke in the snug at the _Floating Log_ should feel as if he had gone nowhere and done little but set down his pint of home brew and lift a glass of the proprietor's _Golden Glory_.

_The Dry Bob_, Sam suspected, had no acquaintance with barrels, and the snores of the gaffer who had subsided with his nose to the backgammon board were attended only by the hiss of dying charcoal in the fire-grate. The stairs to the guest chambers were far less inviting than the wainscoted tunnel at the _Dragon_ but he would rather brave them than sleep the night through on a bench in the common parlour.

"I'll wager it is," said Frodo, who had a keen eye for a hobbit's requirements. "A great deal badder, I should think."

And it was. Aye, said the landlord, when he could be persuaded to take his attention from the dog. There was a room vacant. It had a straw pallet and a window onto the yard. No, they couldn't hire a second pallet; _The Dry Bob_ was full to bursting. Hot water at -- and here he glanced towards the window to confirm his suspicions -- gone seven? They might have a pot of tea, he supposed -- at tuppence or tuppence ha'penny with milk -- but a bath would put an intolerable strain on his staff. As to supper -- if the cook hadn't thrown out the old pease porridge they were welcome to it. He couldn't say fairer than that. One shilling sixpence all told, thank you kindly.

Frodo brought out his purse, remarking that he would happily spare anyone the trouble of coming upstairs but might they eat their cold pease in private? The jollity of the company was liable to prove too much for his friend who had a weak constitution. Thruppence extra ought to be sufficient. Yes, a rush-light as well if it didn't overstretch the inn's resources and the tray in twenty minutes would be acceptable.

"I'll go ahead of you with the rush," he said to Sam and was on the landing before the innkeeper had counted the coins into his strong box. It was too late to ask whether there might be a genteeler public house in Nettlebed, one no less dry in some respects but drier perhaps in others. Now that his master had begun the ascent Sam must perforce follow, and if the dank atmosphere of the entrance had made it plain that whatever awaited them among the rafters would be as cold as stone, at least they were out of the rain.

"Frass," he observed, staring at the exposed ceiling joists of the upper storey. They were shrouded in attercop wefts the like of which Mr. Bilbo wouldn't have stood for in the loft at Bag End.

Frodo paused at the stair-head and waited for Sam to come up with him. "I admire your gift for terse witticisms -- and your Gaffer's, of course -- but if that was meant to be intelligible --"

"Woodworm bore casts underfoot," replied Sam. "They'll have the roof down about our ears. Cousin Holman -- or Long Hom as they call him --"

"_Doubtless it won't be as bad as it looks_," said Frodo, "but if it provides you with subject matter for a story it will have been worth the bother. A ghost story," he added, as he cracked open the door to their room and broached the near impenetrable darkness with his rush.

The 'window onto the yard' let in more air than light and if there was a fire in the hearth it was impossible to tell its meagre flame from the imprint on Sam's eyes of the burning tallow. In the gloom he could make out a spindle-legged table and stool, bare plank walls, and -- His heart leapt.

"'Your concern for my health notwithstanding," said Frodo as he set the rush-light on the mantel and deposited his knapsack at the bed's foot, "I'd have preferred to sleep out-of-doors. Some might argue that a mattress is better than oat grass but _that_ \-- " He pointed at the bedstead with its fustian blanket laid over an uneven straw tick and ragged bolster.

Sam had been told that hobbits in the poorer districts suffered worm ends in the kitchen and rising damp in the passages though he had not believed it; the walls at Number 3 had been plastered by the Greenhands and Bag End was half-panelled throughout. He had never imagined or hoped to see an inn so lacking in creature comforts as _The Dry Bob_ but if he had misgivings in regard to the room's appointments he could not share Frodo's. Indeed, he was unable to share anything at present as the anticipation of occupying the same narrow pallet as his master had temporarily robbed him of speech.

"We _are_ out-of-doors," he answered at length, and measured the bed with a practised eye as if trying to decide how many carrot plants were wanted per foot of row. "And whoever heard of tea at eight o' the clock?"

"It will take a stronger brew than tea to warm _my_ cockles," said Frodo, turning away to hang up his cloak. "A bottle of Old Winyards would serve, if we had one. Are you all right, my dear? You seem distracted."

"Right as a trivet," said Sam, but he was still half-dazed when the scullery-maid came upstairs with their tray and Frodo, who had dusted the deal table in readiness, cast him a curious look as he arranged the dishes.

"You'd be easier if you got rid of the baggage. I know the accommodations aren't what we're used to but it's safe to lay your pack next to mine -- and the hat as well."

"Safe?" said Sam, eyeing the filthy boards. His own bedroom had a small wardrobe on top of which the hat took pride of place but here there were two brass hooks behind the door and a rusted nail above the mantel. He fingered the brim for a minute as his mind pored over the possibilities at his disposal then he put the unruly article in the window embrasure, removed his knapsack, and sat on the bed's edge with a disapproving frown at the pease porridge.

"I could mortar bricks with that lot," he said, but although the porridge was a trifle dry at the margins he was too hungry to grumble about the absence of pork sausage and too tired to mention that they would, in all likelihood, have pease again at breakfast. "And if this is tea, I'm a pigwidgeon."

"I agree that very few leaves were involved," replied Frodo as he added a spoonful of mustard to his plate, "and no more recently than yesterday but it will aid the digestion of the pease quite nicely. Besides, what a quaint episode this will make for my new book, _A Ramble in the Westfarthing._ Bilbo will be pink with envy."

"I thought it was _Natural History and Antiquities of the Westfarthing_," mumbled Sam after the lump of stodge had passed his gullet.

"Nettlebed has no antiquities. In fact -- " He stopped and shook his head at Sam. "As eager as we both are to dive beneath the sheets, you should chew first and then swallow. Have a sip of tea to wash it down."

It had gone down admirably of its own accord but Sam nodded and poured himself out a cup and wished for a means to fry the bacon scraps. If Frodo had something further to say on the subject of antiquities he kept it quiet and the rush was half consumed before they had laid aside their forks amid sighs of relief rather than repletion.

"I'd suggest a pipe full of Old Toby and a song," said Frodo, with a commendable attempt at good cheer, "but the light will have guttered by the time we're done and --"

Sam raised a shoulder. "I'd sooner fill the bed, if it's all the same. You'll want an early start."

"I may," said Frodo, shoving back his stool and collecting the supper things to leave in the passage, "though I expect an early start will be thrust upon us by the ticking unless the slats collapse during the night and we suffocate under the wreckage."

"Happen," said Sam. He had experienced no ill effects from sitting on the mattress for a quarter hour in his outdoor togs but it was impossible to say what the weight of two grown hobbits might do to the sagging bed-frame. Nevertheless, he wasted not a second in stripping off once Frodo had stepped into the corridor; his clothes had become inexplicably _binding_ and there was, he was ashamed to note, an exact impression of his rain-soaked hinder parts on the worn fustian. "We'll find out in a jiff or my name isn't Samwise Gamgee."

"That's the stuff," replied Frodo and shut the door just as Sam threw down the coverlet to expose the hemp sheets. "Oh, dear. You're -- "

Sam counted his toes twice over and the knots in the flooring, which were spiders if you peered at them slantways, and the quill ends poking through the bolster.

"I don't have a nightshirt, sir, meaning no disrespect. I sleep in my drawers at home."

Frodo smiled but his eyes had fastened on the mattress as if it were the most fascinating thing he had seen since Lotho Sackville-Baggins had fallen into the village midden.

"Of course you do. I can't tolerate a nightshirt for more than five minutes together. As a rule, I -- Well, never mind that now." He gingerly touched the coarse bedding. "I was going to say -- you're a brave fellow for venturing into the unknown with nothing to protect you but a pair of linen drawers. Is it all right, do you think?"

"No worse'n Cousin Harding's pasture," said Sam, risking a tremulous glance at his master, "though near as cold, I reckon. Bear up, sir. It'll be warm the moment we --"

Perhaps the large knot to the left of the chamber pot _was_ a spider. Sam climbed onto the tick and lay with one arm behind his head, the blanket pulled up to conceal the extent of his discomfort. He had come to realise in the course of their travels that he had an uncommon interest in Frodo's bottom and to see it divested of what normally hid it from view was arguably a greater blow to his composure than any amount of obstreperous bedding. The bottle-green waistcoat had been draped over his own drab buff, the shirt suspended from the nail at the corner of the mantel-shelf, and the tight breeches of grey worsted flung across the stool before he remembered to breathe.

"When frogs grow hair," said Frodo, oblivious to the gossamer fineness of his underwear. He made quick use of the chamber pot, tested the resilience of the creaking bed-slats, and settled next to Sam with his face towards the inky shadows cast by the flickering rush-light. "Our things won't dry."

"Very likely not, sir, but we've each got a change of clothes, haven't we?"

"Speaking for myself," said Frodo, his voice muffled as if he were already half asleep, "I have several. Four pairs of wool breeches, one of plum velvet, five lawn shirts, and a lightweight jacket. I didn't need a packing list after all. It was a simple business once I'd thought about it."

"So I told Marigold," said Sam and waited for Frodo to ask why a gentlehobbit's wardrobe inventory should be a conversation-piece in the Gamgee household. It was the sort of comment he had learned to anticipate and he was disappointed when it failed to materialise. Had the circumstances been different he might have volunteered an explanation, but his shoulders were frigid, his rear end prickled, and the woollen vest he had packed for just such an eventuality was out of reach at the bed's end. If he turned on his side the rustle of shifting straw would disturb his master; if he held to his place he would be on tenterhooks all night and frozen stiff by morning. It was a rum go, he decided, adjusting the position of his head on the bolster and his feet where they stuck out from the carelessly tucked bedding. Then he sighed a time or two for good measure and scratched his thigh.

"Are you awake?" he whispered at last.

"No," said Frodo and burrowed deeper until he had disappeared from sight. "The sheets are mildewed, there's a wet patch by the footboard, and you won't leave off squirming. How could I be awake?"

"Sorry, sir." Sam watched the rush burn down to the jaws and the softened angles of Frodo's body merge with the darkness. "If I hadn't brought up the chippings --"

"I shouldn't be surprised to hear that our bolster is _stuffed_ with chippings," replied Frodo, pounding the object of his scorn with a fist. "I wouldn't give a fig if it weren't so blasted cold."

"Mebbe -- " Sam knew that he might pretend to fall asleep in order to do what a less scrupulous lad would have done long ago but Frodo would surely wheedle the deception out of him at breakfast. "Excuse the liberty --"

"It's not your fault that Nettlebed is deficient in those little conveniences that make life bearable for the solitary gentlehobbit. Cakes and ale, glass window panes --"

"You'd be warmer with my arm round you," finished Sam in the smallest possible voice. "Halfred says I'm hot enough to burn the hair off a pig's back."

There was an indeterminate sound from the bedclothes and Sam moved nearer in case his master had choked on a leftover fragment of pease pudding and required assistance. It was then no difficult matter to locate the drawstring waistband and to rest his hand, as rough and coarse as he feared it was, on the smooth skin above it.

"Sir?"

"I suppose we could test the assertion," said Frodo, his breathing somewhat hurried for a hobbit who had taken no pipeweed at supper, "but I have it on good authority that I'm a restless sleeper."

"I'll hold you fast."

"What would I do without you?" Sam heard, or thought he heard, though if he hadn't nodded off beforetime he would have shown Frodo in no uncertain terms that the obligation was altogether on the other side.


	6. In Which Frodo and Sam Talk Around Each Other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild crack, AU, an utterly incomprehensible narrative... Frodo quotes John Dryden, Sam cites passages from _The Cottage Gardener's Magazine_. Yes, I mean 'bladder'.

"The giant fell arse over tip and Nob woke to find his mam standing by him with a wet dish-clout in her hand."

Frodo stopped in his tracks and Sam took the opportunity to tuck a morsel of dried apple into his cheek. The landlord at _The Dry Bob_ had been persuaded to give them a packed lunch but the stale pasty and turnip pickle had made no dint in Sam's appetite.

"Not a clean handkerchief?"

"No, sir. They were as poor as rats. Nob had traded the family cow for a sack of seed taters and fallen into a bog-hole after too much ale at the _Pig and Skittles_. He raved for a sennight."

"So the golden eggs were a fever dream?" asked Frodo, producing one of Marigold's laundry receipts from his coat pocket and pressing out the creases against his sleeve.

"Aye, but Nob became a dab hand at tater farming and married a Hardbottom from Pincup. They had thirteen children and my Great-aunt Olrun was the -- "

"The Westfarthing version of 'Nob and the Bean-stalk' is similar to the rest," observed Frodo, and sat down on the granite milestone with an expression on his face that spoke of a 'note' in the offing, "but Southfarthing Nob climbs a grapevine and in the Eastfarthing -- "

He patted his pockets thrice over, then shook out the handkerchief which he had thrust inside his shirt cuff at breakfast. "The fellow meets with an unfortunate accident due to broad bean wilt. Where is my pencil?"

Sam was not surprised that Buckland Nob had been the dullest quill in the holder. No one with an ounce of common sense would trust his neck to a legume when it was well-known that _squash_ vines led to Giant Hickathrift's cloud-top smial.

"Spring sown broad beans or autumn sown?" he asked, unable to suppress a flicker of professional interest.

"I haven't a clue; I didn't ask him. My No-blot pencil --"

"You knew Nob o' Tighfield?" said Sam, impressed that his master's extensive connections should include a cowherd from the Westmarch whose fondness for Nut Brown Ale was still a byword in the district.

"I hate to cast aspersions on your lineage," answered Frodo, his eyes falling to the laundry receipt as if he had forgotten what he had planned to do with it, "but 'Nob' is a fabrication. In any case, the Westfarthing version of the tale is obviously derivative. He was born in Willowbottom near the confluence of the Thistle Brook and the Shirebourne."

"Ah," said Sam, who had followed this explanation with some difficulty. He could offer no opinions on Nob's failure to maintain a healthy bean crop as soil conditions beyond the Stock Road were a matter of hearsay to a Gamgee, but he felt that vegetable marrows would, on the whole, have been a safer choice for a novice gardener. "They're tetchy buggers."

"Just so, but Cousin Bilbo devised a simple method of illustrating the relationship between folktale traditions. If Eastfarthing Nob were _here_," explained Frodo, pointing to the bottom line on Marigold's laundry receipt which said _three pairs of linen drawers, sixpence_, "then Tighfield or Sackville Nob would be _here_, in the vicinity of my pillow cases, and subsequent Nobs would form ranks at the top next to _parlour curtains half a crown_. A series of lines drawn from Eastfarthing Nob to his branching descendants would produce a longfather-tree of 'Nob and the Bean-stalk.' Quite elegant, don't you think?"

Sam studied the scrap of paper but he was unable to make sense of the arrangement when the original receipt was of greater consequence to him than an entire waggon-load of Nobs. _Linen drawers_...

"I meant broad beans, not tales. They don't thrive in damp weather and if you crowd them together -- " He faltered. It was hard to pin down the purpose of the archly raised eyebrow but he rather thought it was directed at him. "Sir?"

"Nor do I," said Frodo a little abstractedly, and extended a handful of honeyberries which were freckled with lint from his coat pocket. "Enjoy damp weather, that is. Have I touched on your weakness for digression?"

"You might 'a' done," replied Sam, frowning at the purple fruit. He wondered if the Gaffer would countenance his growing a berry at Bag End that looked like Ted Sandyman's willie warbler or if he would perceive the likeness. "But you told me as how Eastfarthing Nob had a mishap in the garden and I -- "

"That was five minutes ago. I showed you Bilbo's invention as best I could _without a pencil_ \-- I know you were listening because you repeated the words 'linen drawers' -- and your response was _I meant broad beans_. Did you miss part of the conversation or have my wits gone west as well as my pencil?"

Sam was loath to confess that he had lost track of the to and fro shortly after the broad bean wilt and had only picked it up again upon mention of his master's underwear. If he had said the words aloud -- and since the previous night they had become more than a commonplace for what went beneath Frodo's breeches and over his privates -- he would have to mind his tongue in future.

"Mr. Bilbo was a hobbit of great invention, sir, but our Nob can't have been a figment 'cos if he was there'd be no accounting for Great-aunt Olrun."

"Bother your Great-aunt," said Frodo, twisting the receipt into a knot. "I've weathered Aunt Dora's guidance on numerous occasions without in the least being able to account for her. I don't grasp the relevance of Nob, but we can discuss it the moment I find my pencil. Have you seen it?"

"Unless I misremember -- " If Frodo was agreeable he could order six berry plants from _Shrewe and Woodshall_ and bung them in below the scullery windows where they might escape the Gaffer's disapproval. Newfanglement, he'd call it, seeing as how the blackcurrants yielded ten pounds a bush and the raspberries four or five in a yard of row. "You put it behind your ear at lunch and when I'd finished the tale of Halfast's Tree-man you made a note on your cuff and I never saw it after. It was a mite tiddly by then, sir, begging your pardon. Shall I fetch out the travelling inkwell?"

"Not for a few square inches of paper. I was so flustered this morning that I packed my notebook with the soiled handkerchiefs by mistake. You've no idea how dismayed I was to see the pease pudding turn up at breakfast as if we hadn't just forced down what I'd hoped were the last fossilized remnants. And I hardly slept a wink."

"My wax pencil --" Sam had passed the hours before dawn in a state of utter wakefulness, but he was certain that Frodo had been dead to the world until the rattle of iron-shod wheels in the courtyard had sent him tumbling out of bed with the fustian blanket round his middle. Sam had feigned a snore for several attentive bliss-filled minutes and then had asked, in a voice that suggested a reluctance to leave the comforts of _The Dry Bob_, what o'clock it was. He had been powerless to do otherwise as his morning glory had proven more pressing than the bristled mattress and once Frodo had fastened the multitude of buttons on his wool breeches and ambled downstairs to order breakfast Sam had taken the short road to Woody End.

"It won't do but thank you all the same," answered Frodo and bent to decipher the inscription on the milestone. "Marigold says that my No-blot pencil is completely indelible. She'd prefer that I stop using it in bed though I'd have thought it was easier to rinse out than the bottle of carbon ink I spilled last week. I suppose it's moot now that I've lost it. _To Gammidge: Ten Miles._ If we retrace our steps -- "

"We won't get there by nightfall, sir, and Harding will send Thor to -- "

"Thor?" asked Frodo, checking the time on his quarter repeater so that he might argue the point till he had worn Sam to the stump. "It's half two. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't I spot a bracket of chicken mushrooms in that beech copse near Tighfield? Surely there's no harm in a brief diversion. Mushrooms in wild garlic sauce..."

"Harding's mastiff," said Sam, not unaware that Frodo disliked dogs almost as much as he disliked Lobelia Sackville-Baggins and creamed carrots. "He guards the swine."

The remark might not have slipped out if Frodo hadn't left _Mushrooms Demystified_ at home under the pretence of favouring his gardener's advice, but he had failed to heed Sam's caution in the pine woods and at elevenses he had narrowly missed disregarding it a second time. As luck would have it, Sam had neglected to bring a coil of rope, and the tree mushroom which he swore was unfit to eat in quantity was unreachable by ordinary means. His master had contented himself with observing that although he expected Sam to be right about the garden it was unfair that he should be right about everything else; at present, Frodo was looking towards the line of distant trees and the lighter green of the track that had brought them from Nettlebed to the farthest reaches of the Tighfield Road.

"He's thirty inches at the withers," added Sam, grateful that his Gaffer wasn't there to witness his waywardness.

Frodo clicked shut his watch case and hastily returned it to his fob pocket.

"I don't -- Why, bless me!" he exclaimed, his eyes riveted by the pencil end protruding from the yellow satin of his pocket lining. "I haven't lost it at all. Here it is! I'm sorry, my dear, did you say something?"

"No, sir," replied Sam, choosing the path of discretion. It would be unkind to dwell on Thor's conformation when Frodo was a little too pale for someone who had just found his pencil. "But I wouldn't use it again this side of Gammidge, if I were you."

"Perish the thought! I'll copy out the history of Westfarthing Nob while you're playing _Suck and Blow_." He closed his jacket over the buttercup waistcoat and forestalled Sam's protest with an airy wave. "You've already alluded to your buttocks. Why not tell me the Tighfield variation of Cinder-lad as we go?"

Sam had tramped half the distance from Nettlebed to Gammidge since first breakfast and climbed the marrow vine on an empty stomach. He had stolen a giant's prize goose and swapped stories with Frodo till his mouth was parched. It had come upon him somewhere between 'Teeny Tiny Tobold' and 'Wee Rattle Stilt' that his master was an altogether friskier hobbit than the one who ate his meals alone in the kitchen and refused company on Highdays. Keeping abreast of him was no easy task and if his chit-chat at Bag End was generally confined to _it's blowing a gale in the study_ or _there's a soggy patch on the ceiling_ he peppered the hunt for mushrooms with a wealth of peculiar tales. Sam had envisioned quite other ways in which to liven up their outing and yet the burden of attending to the deeds of Gilden Smiles was far from unbearable. It might not have crossed his mind last Friday that such would be the case but the world looked different to a smitten hobbit.

"Ahem," he said, and lapsed into the silence proper to a Gamgee confronted with imponderables.

Nob of Tighfield's adventure was real enough -- more so than Nob himself, if Frodo were to be believed -- until the drips from his ma's dish clout woke him. A two room smial behind the cow shed must have been a dreadful come-down to a lad with aspirations though Sam thought it better than being gobbled alive by giants. And no one, not even Great-aunt Olrun's Nob, could know what kind of story he was in before it was through; a dream about overgrown vegetables might well turn into a humdrum tale of seed taters and a wife from Pincup. Still and all, a hobbit who came round with his fingers twined in his master's drawstring would have a fair inkling of the inevitable outcome, wouldn't he?

Sam fell back a pace to watch the countryside unfold -- the gradual northward swell of unused pastureland tufted with spinneys and the deep fir-wood to their left – and to stare at his master as if he could hinder him from straying by sheer determination. Frodo was curiously adept at vanishing and might do so at any moment or tumble into a rain-filled hole to the detriment of his second best weskit. Sam lifted an eye to the fretwork of clouds and weighed the odds of another storm finding them in the open. The sky hung low in every direction but the trees that marched across the path at some two furlongs distance would provide them with shelter if Frodo didn't hare off into the cow parsley after butterflies.

Sam tutted and shook his head and smiled at the quirks of landed hobbits. They would be in Gammidge presently, soaked to the balls or no, but in the meantime there was a breeze on his face bearing the smell of wild thyme and a quiet inside which had strengthened despite the mildewed sheets. That Fosco Proudfoot might lay waste to the garden was no longer a concern when Hobbiton was twenty leagues and the width of a straw mattress away.

_Fiddle-dee-dee_, thought Sam, and dabbled his toes in the chalky mud by the verge. The Gaffer had said that Frodo would 'get round him' and he must have done, for if the invitation had been a whim born in part from the woe-begone look his master had cast at the row of potting trowels it was apparent now that Samwise Gamgee was dancing the springle-ring to a Baggins measure. Should Frodo decide that a hidden path west of the moon was preferable to the Gammidge road he would not lack for companionship.

"Cinder-lad?" prompted a voice at his elbow, and Sam opened his mouth to answer _'no, it's me'_ like a ninny but his tongue caught on the words under the weight of Frodo's regard.

"Sweet green cobnuts," said Frodo, in much the manner of old Mr. Bilbo noting a favourite passage of Elvish verse, though his expression was less studious than famished.

"Not in these woods. There's a pint jar of honeyed nuts in the pantry at Bag End if someone hasn't scoffed it. Next week I'll bake a tray of biscuits."

"You could," replied Frodo, taking out his pipeweed pouch. He appeared remarkably indifferent to the offer for a hobbit who spent his afternoons with a gallon of strong tea and a stack of sweets. "I suppose your Gaffer doesn't approve of mirrors."

"Mirrors?" Sam had learned to ignore the out of kelter speech that distinguished the Baggins line but the sudden advent of Frodo's dressing glass was a surprise. "Why would a Gamgee want such a fingle-fangle? Halfred is the spitten picture of our dad, and I of him. Marigold and Daisy -- "

"Two beans in a pod, as you aptly put it." Frodo felt his pockets. "Or six beans in the present case. Nonetheless, you're the only one who has green – Where’s my pipe?"

"You've got me there, sir," said Sam, inspecting his thumbs while Frodo extracted the briar from his jacket lining and packed it with Old Toby. They weren’t so alike as it happened. Hamson was cackhanded in the garden and had been dispatched to Tighfield on that account but Halfred's skill with tender perennials was famous in the Northfarthing. He fell lamentably short on potato cultivation, but Gaffer Gamgee excused him the failing as it was not to be wondered at in that climate. "Our Halfred --"

"Which one?" enquired Frodo, around his pipe. "Your lot are as bewildering as the Tooks. Isengrim, Isembold, Isembard, Isengar, _Donnamira_. What sort of name is that, I ask you?"

“I couldn’t say, Mr. Frodo.” Sam squinted at the towering apparition of Paladin Took’s longfather-tree as though he were checking for blackfly. “Before Hamfast’s day – the first Hamfast and my great-great-great-grandda, if you follow -- the Gammidgys had good hobbit names. Buttercup or Fiddleneck or Slimpod Milkvetch. Then –“

“You’re chaffing me,” said Frodo. He poked a thin finger at Sam’s middle. “Your forebears have been Hamfasts, Hobs, Halfreds, and Wisemans since Marcho set foot on the west bank of the Brandywine.“

“Knocky-Bob will have a fit when he hears it,” answered Sam, wavering a little at the persistence of the finger pressing on his coat button. “Any road, there's a peck more o' Tooks than Gamgees between here and the River.”

“Even so –“ Frodo resumed his way towards the trees just as a drop of rain struck the brim of Sam’s hat. “You have at least four score collateral relatives in addition to those too young or infirm for the rigours of the sweat house. I have a paltry handful. Posco, Dudo, Dora, Ponto, Porto -- and not a male offspring among ‘em.”

“The old lads at the _Ivy Bush_ \-- “ Sam coughed into his collar.

“What of them,” said Frodo, “or should I ask?”

“Daddy Twofoot told Odo Bolger that Mr. Bilbo ran off with a lass from Willowbottom and Old Noakes said _‘that leaves young Frodo to take a turn amid the cabbages’_. Pardon the impertinence.” Sam’s cheeks prickled uncomfortably. “But as I was saying, our Halfred has a green thumb, too. He won a cup at the Great Spring Show last Thrimidge for his – “

“Thumbs?”

“Columbine ‘Old Winyards’.”

“Ah,” said Frodo, seeming none the wiser for the information. He threaded his arm through Sam’s. “I’ll introduce you to my mirror one day. Meanwhile, tell me about Cinder-lad or Jack the Troll-killer. If the rain catches us out we’ll amuse ourselves in a convenient hollow with stories and rounds.”

“_If wishes were buttercakes_,” muttered Sam, who had no objection to dallying in a fern-brake but thought it a faint hope. The rain would be a slight thing till they came to Limewort Slack where the path crossed into the open fields east of Gammidge. Then it would bucket down and there’d be wet hankies, short tempers, and muddy feet by the time they spotted Harding’s pig shed. He sighed. “Sup at the _Ivy Bush_ on a Highday and you’ll hear a tale from Old Noakes to make your hair stand on end.”

“I just did.”

Sam’s arm was held fast in a grip of iron or he might have put a hand on his master’s shoulder and given a few words of support. _Keep your pecker up_ maybe or _all’s well as ends better._ It was true that Frodo had cousins in Buckland -- and the Great Smials, too -- but cousins weren’t _family_ no matter how often Master Peregrin slept in the second best bedroom.

He drew a shaky breath and considered his duty as head gardener. Looking out for Mr Frodo was as much work as trapping cutworms in the bean patch. _In ye go, Samwise, and mind your footing_.

“Then Miller Sandyman, the low-born scoundrel, said _’‘Tisn’t enough to have cabbage; yer need summat to grease it’,_ but my old Gaffer, who don’t care for Sandyman above half, sent him off with a flea in his ear. _’Well, I never!’ _, says he. _’ If ‘tweren’t for the Bagginses Hobbiton would be a spot in the road ‘twixt Bywater and Michel Delving. Our Mr Frodo lacks for naught but whatever he wants he’ll find at Number 3. And no chalk in the flour neither.’_”

“My goodness,” said Frodo, sounding unaccountably cheerful under the circumstances. “I’m flabbergasted.”

“So I should think,” replied Sam in a voice fraught with disapproval. “Chalk _and_ tater starch.”

Frodo’s grip tightened. There was a furrow between his brows that marked some train of thought too deep for a Gamgee but he said nothing further as the haze of beech on the horizon changed to stipples of gold and grey and the track to a steep descent shadowed by sprawling branches. It was no great wonder that Sam’s revelation of mercantile perfidy had left him speechless. The case of _Baggins vs. Sandyman_ was meant to have resolved the affair but the unprecedented fine of sixpence had done little to amend the miller’s dishonest ways. If Frodo hadn’t chosen to cart his unmilled grain to Budgeford on the grounds that a hogshead of stout from the _Floating Log_ and a purchase of custom embossed stationery in Frogmorton made the journey ‘economical’ he could scarcely have failed to notice the swindle.

After a mile of digging his toes into the leaf litter had become three and his worries about Hobbiton flour had dwindled to a wisp of thistledown, Sam began to feel that a fellow who had four score collateral relatives might appear boastful if he were to remark on it more than once in a fortnight to a beleaguered gentlehobbit whose probable successor was Lotho Sackville-Baggins. Nevertheless --

“Halfred won the gold cup two years running,” he concluded in a rush and launched into a vigorous rendition of _One lad went to mow_. He had reached the verse in which five men and their dogs were sharpening the scythes when a polite _ahem_ stopped the flow of merriment.

“Have I told you,” said Frodo, pausing to shake the wet off his cloak, “that your conversation rivals the Withywindle in complexity? Not to mention doggedness.”

“No, sir, but you said ‘thumbs’ before I’d finished my whys and howsomevers, then ‘ah’ in a doubtful --“ He shut his eyes on the offchance that Halfred’s prize blooms would settle in his brain-box without interference from the frosty Baggins stare. “Storksbill the year previous, if I’m not mistaken. Withywindle?”

“A stream in the Old Forest with a manner reminiscent of bindweed,” answered Frodo absently, his attention fixed upon the glint of slow-moving water just now visible through the trees. The way broadened at an acre’s length and the ancient beeches there gave place to alder and willow carr. Already the precipitous slope was easier underfoot, and if a tendril of chimney-smoke had drifted past Sam might have imagined himself on Hill Lane with two pint glasses and a bench in the _Ivy Bush_ near at hand. Instead, a sudden break in the cloud roof threw bands of light across the overgrown fen below, and a golden mist blossomed upwards until every leaf and twig shimmered. Birchwath Peat Holes, thought Sam, and Gammidge not far off.

"T'ain't natural,” he said.

"Bindweed or sunlight?" enquired Frodo, his fingers wandering to the spot on his jacket beneath which rested the indelible No-blot pencil. If the measuring stick had not been left in the library corner on the morning of their departure, Sam would have suspected that his master was on the threshold of a property inspection or perhaps a note of grave import. His features were taut as a penny sausage. "Weeds are altogether natural and sunlight will prevent us from arriving in Gammidge chilled to the marrow. Or did you mean Halfred’s winning the gold cup two years running?”

"Living hard by a forest hedge,” said Sam, for whom the words ‘Old Forest’ conjured up images of frightsome boggle-boos. “And _boats_.”

“I see.” Frodo reflected on the dangers of Buckland for as long as it took to consult his watch, then he shrugged as if to say _the traditions of Hobbiton are strange to me_.

“That’s a pity because while the Bywater District has many conveniences – a gentlehobbit’s outfitter’s, a pastry shop, a wine merchant -- and the view from Bag End is unmatched, I’ve an urge to lease the old homestead for the summer months and build a cottage in the woods.“ He indicated the fern-covered bank to his right. “_There_ will do nicely. I can write my treatise on Westfarthing customs without the distraction of – of --“

He made a vague gesture that encompassed the plentiful sprays of ripening bilberry and the weather-stained brim of Sam’s hat.

“Sir?”

“Landlordry. Without the distraction of landlordry. I could forage for black trumpets, gather redcurrants, tend a peep of Whitwell Stumpies –“

“Did you pick some o’ them spindle-shanked mushrooms?” asked Sam, a trifle pale around the lips, as he eyed the bulging pockets of Frodo’s coat. “The day afore yesterday, when my back was turned?”

“Certainly not,” replied Frodo, glancing down at the uneven drape of his grey walking jacket. “Handkerchiefs and pipe weed. Possibly a specimen jar. What would Cousin Harding say if I arrived at the ancestral bath-house in a condition of uncouth disorder?”

“S’elp my taters!”

“Really?” Frodo placed an inquisitive hand on the side of his pack where a hobbit who was acquainted with notebooks and monographs could see an all too familiar outline. “Drat. What was I -- ? Oh, yes. And spend the evenings in a solitude unmarred by drunken revelry at the bottom of Hill Lane. A pigeon-hole desk, a new stove –“

"Rising damp in the parlour, worm ends above the hall stand, _outdoor plumbing_.”

“Killjoy.”

Sam had brooded on a number of eventualities during his spell as general factotum but most of them pertained to crop failure or death watch beetles. If there was a chapter in _The Cottage Gardener's Magazine and Register_ about unusually ardent attachments he hadn’t found it although the passage on _promoting a master’s rural pleasures_ \-- snugged between _‘Merits of Iron Hot-houses’_ and _‘How to Train a Peach Tree’_ \-- might be apposite. At any rate, he would sooner leave the tomatoes to Odo Proudfoot’s great-nephew than suffer being lent out with the estate to the Sackville-Bagginses.

“Mr Frodo, I – “

“Bag End is a warren of disused rooms, mildewed wardrobes, and excessive quantities of bed linen. I’m a fart in a bottle,” said Frodo, apparently not displeased at the notion. “No father, no sisters – thank goodness -- an uncle who buggered off to parts unknown, distant cousins emptying my larder at Yuletide, Aunt Dora Baggins… We’re a sad lot in comparison to the Gamgees. To whom can I say _’ thus looks the prop of my declining years’_? Quentale Ardanomion, Book 9.”

“To –“

“I’m afraid that Aunt Dora took umbrage at Bilbo’s gift of a waste-paper basket. If anything, her prolixity has increased in recent weeks. I’m to marry a comfortable dowry who will support me in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed – I assume that she means fine pipe-weed and a parcel of books thrice annually – as Bilbo hadn’t a farthing, and dedicate my spare time to the perpetuation of the Baggins name. I shan’t tell you what I said.”

“Best not,” said Sam, and walked ahead a few paces to avoid giving the impression that he wanted to hear it. He hoped it was similar to the oath uttered by Pongo Firthbank during the Westfarthing Darts Championship when Ted Sandyman’s final dart bounced out and hit him on the forehead. The suggestion that a Mrs. Baggins might occupy the front bedroom inside a twelve-month didn’t bear scrutiny.

"There’s a hole in my middle where my fourses ought to be,” he went on in as steady a voice as he could muster. If Frodo built a cottage beyond the White Downs or – or -- Not that he had much time to spare after a morning in the study, several miles of strenuous exercise, and lashings of warm punch at the _Green Dragon_ before bed. “Could we stop to –“

“Yes, of course.” Frodo caught him up just as the path disappeared in a tangle of sedge and goat willow beneath a brightness that made Sam blink. “I noted the hour. Who would have thought that we’d be feasting on stale buns under a soon-to-be cloudless sky at -- What did you call this?” He pointed to the waterlogged ground at either hand and the shallow brook spiked with club-rush.

“Birchwath Peat Holes. I – “ Sam was seldom at a loss for words in matters of garden design but here he felt himself on the brink of an unmapped territory more perilous than Bywater pond in a hard freeze. Should he refer to the likelihood of dry rot or direct his course towards the weightier obstacle of Dora Baggins? He turned an anxious look on his master and stood thus in a welter of confusion till the soft _hweet_ of a redstart broke the silence.

“As you know, I’m disinclined to take advice,” said Frodo, prodding his stick at a tussock while Sam attempted to quell the insistent rumble below his waistband. “I’d hate to miss the further adventures of Tighfield Nob because of a meddlesome spinster.”

“T’ain’t my business,” answered Sam, as though he had never wished otherwise. _See, hear, and hold yer tongue_ had come down to him with the potting trowels and the Gaffer’s bent asparagus gouge, not to speak of an embarassment of Nan Gamgee’s favourite aphorisms. But lest anyone should think that he had an interest improper to his station in Frodo’s matrimonial prospects he added, “Tales, that is.”

“On the contrary. How could I finish my history of Westfarthing antiquities without your help, to say nothing of the garden path or the horsehair sofa?” Frodo pushed back his hood and his gaze, as grave as a mustard-pot, fell on Sam. “You don’t suppose I would --”

The skin across Sam’s cheeks felt tight as if he had run the mile from Hobbiton to Bag End in mid-summer. He had done so once, when news of Mr. Bilbo’s heir -- having arrived at Number 3 by way of the _Ivy Bush_ where the gaffers on the outside bench had witnessed the procession along the Bywater Road – had sent him flying up Hill Lane with his shirt-tails a-flutter and no hat. The old master, who was quick to state the obvious, had remarked that Sam’s face was hot enough to light a beacon.

“It’s not my place to _suppose_, sir. The Gaffer has strict views on supposin’.”

Frodo’s eyes narrowed.

“You’ve said that twice now. You _suppose_ oftener than most hobbits of my acquaintance. I wouldn’t be surprised if you spent the forenoons _supposing_ in the garden shed.”

“I haven’t the time, Mr. Frodo. The leeks – “

“Blast the leeks. Since you _must_ know, I told her that a comfortable dowry was out of the question. The estate, I said, keeps us fully engrossed from first breakfast, when we examine the accounts and inspect the garden, until dinner at eight and a final pipe together in the arbour. I await a letter by return of post.”

“Best in show,” said Sam on behalf of the disparaged leeks but he was relieved that life at Bag End would follow its accustomed course without hindrance.

“Indeed,” replied Frodo as he stooped to study a clump of kingcups on the brook’s margin. “The Gamgees dominate the agricultural fairs. Nonetheless, the smial is too large for a single hobbit, even one with a substantial library. And though it pains me to mention this, it hadn’t escaped my notice that some at the _Ivy Bush_ share Aunt Dora’s opinions.”

Sam had given young Sandyman a shiner last Tuesday week behind the granary for sharing an opinion which revealed an indifference to village proprieties. No one took offence at Odo Bolger’s idle speculations on the inhabitants of Buckland but to question Frodo’s longfather-tree and the odds of its continuance was insufferable.

“If they don’t mind their peas and cues, I’ll whap ‘em,” he said.

Frodo left off his perusal of the undergrowth and regarded Sam with the greatest attention. There was an awkward moment when Sam feared that he might have admitted to more than he should and another of wondering if his master was the only hobbit in the Four Farthings who had eyes the colour of a storm-drenched sky.

“I’ve become accustomed to a variety of things,” said Frodo, “at least one of which can’t be bought by any means. Bilbo, being as impervious to Aunt Dora’s advice as I am, filled the quiet spaces with cousins and clutter but I thought – “

He glanced away.

“Shall we have our tea on the far side? I fancy it’s drier.”

~~***~~

“I expected a ford,” said Frodo, thirty minutes and a pair of muddy breeches later. “’_Wath_’ would seem to imply it. If you’d grabbed my arm at the second peat hole I might not have taken a header. Unlike Westfarthing Nob, I don’t have the excuse of too much ale at the _Pig and Skittles._ Where is it, by the way?”

“On the Tighfield Road near Little Delving.” Sam fished out a packet of currant buns made up in brown paper and a bottle of dandelion beer. “I can’t vouch for the ale but Great-aunt Olrun earned a tidy sum in the skittle-ground.”

“I dare say it was recompense for the loss of Giant Hickathrift’s golden eggs,” answered Frodo, who had removed his wet cloak and was exploring the traces of grime on his hindmost end. “I need to be squeezed dry and aired on the hedge, metaphorically speaking. Do you have a clothes’ brush?”

Sam lacked confidence with respect to metaphors but the filthiness of those parts which ought to be aired and squeezed was impossible to mistake. He pondered the back of Frodo’s woollen togs as he unfastened the stopper and spread open the waxed paper.

“Naw,” he said at last . “You’d best change. Gaffer’ll frump me if you drag into Gammidge all over muck. ‘Sides, a thing worth doing is – ‘

“Worth doing at our ease.” Frodo put a hand to his buttons and shivered as a thin cloud passed across the sun. “To be sure. We’ll tackle my trousers tomorrow unless you have a cramp in your left buttock.”

Sam sucked his lower lip.

“_Well_, sir. A thing worth doing is worth doing _well_. These buns – “

“Stale,” said Frodo, pulling a collection of oddments from his pocket, “and the currants no less wrinkled than my bawbles will be once I’ve stripped down. A foretaste, I suppose, of the ordeal that awaits us in Cousin Harding’s duck pond. Do I recall an allusion to baked potatoes?”

“Not tonight,” replied Sam, and set Frodo’s scrip-scrap on the edge of a cast-off hankie. _An acorn, a pen knife, a stick of sealing wax…._ “Maybe a hot pork coddle and a snug – “

He looked up.

“-- tent.” Frodo’s underwear had lost none of its fineness since _The Dry Bob_ but while Sam had grown used to dreaming of loosely tied drawers it was a shock to find them at arm’s length in broad daylight. “Dad said –“

"Yes?" urged Frodo, too closely engaged with the obstreperous mass of wool round his ankles to realise that Sam had dropped the buns and was staring open-mouthed at his monogrammed linen.

"-- summat ‘bout sharing with Tom Cotton.”

"Nonsense," said Frodo as the object of Sam’s devotion vanished beneath the plum velvet breeches. “Your cousin must share elsewhere. If I’d known the accommodations were poor I would have ordered a tent from Halfsnood and Thumbeles.”

“Who’d carry it?” said Sam, a touch of asperity in his tone. He dusted their fourses and gave his master two unbuttered halves of what the innkeeper in Nettlebed had been pleased to call ‘muffings’ but which Sam dubbed ‘hard as the Widow Rumble’s agnails’. He wanted to ask whether the pot of honey might be within hailing distance but Frodo had unearthed the maroon buckram notebook and was seated on his pack in an attitude that sparked a shudder of apprehension in Sam’s innards. _Never such a lad for questions_, he thought.

“I would. Farmer Cotton or young Tolman?”

“You’d be crushed flat as a bug, sir, begging your pardon, and my Gaffer –“

“How much simpler,” interrupted Frodo, dipping a bun in his mug of dandelion ale, “if Wilcome, Bowman, and Carl didn’t answer to ‘Jolly’, ‘Nick’, and ‘Nobs’. When there are so many of you it provokes confusion.”

Sam was uncertain why it should matter that Old Tom had erred thrice over in the naming of his sons though it was conceivable that Frodo was having some trouble with the appendices to _Natural History and Antiquities of the Westfarthing_. Or was it _An Excursion to Tighfield with An Account of a Curious Bathing Custom_? He glared at his biscuit in as great a confusion at the astounding assortment of unfinished or scarcely begun projects as Frodo claimed to have with regard to the Gamgee tree.

“There’s but one o’ me,” he said, the hole in his middle no smaller for the addition of a measly mouthful or three. Perhaps there was a pickled onion left in the crock to cure his colly-wobbles in the absence of a sausage pasty. “Might I – “

“I’ve tried to tell you that,” replied Frodo, discarding the remains of his bun and stuffing the pen knife and other bits and pieces into his already burdened coat pockets, “but you won’t listen.”

“Cried frying-pan to kettle,” muttered Sam, in despair at his want of foresight in provisioning their expedition. If the Gaffer hadn’t hauled him out of bed at five to empty the earth closet a few mince tarts would be lodged in his porridge-bowl now instead of lying forgotten in the larder at Number 3 where they were no good to anyone. _One nail drives out another_. He drained his ale and watched as Frodo stowed the book away again. It was hard to keep up with its comings and goings. “Tell me what, sir?”

“Did Marigold shrink my breeches?” Frodo motioned to the splendidly tailored velvet which clung to his hips tighter than the skin on a peach. “Oughtn’t there to be room for a hankie at the very least?”

“No, sir. You fill them out to advantage, if I may be so bold.”

“You may,” said Frodo and smoothed his palm across the cloth in a most distracting way, “but it’s still an inconvenience. And after the stories with which you’ve entertained me on our journey – Rowan Greenhand, Frollo Brown, the incident of the well – I’ll feel like the fellow in plum velvet whose uncle pocketed a precious gem and disappeared in front of half the Shire. The last Baggins of Bag End in the midst of – “ He coughed as if a speck of currant bun had gone down sideways. “You know the rest.“

His face had borne the same expression when Sam, not yet seized by an imp of the perverse, had let slip that his tomatoes would be at the mercy of Odo Proudfoot’s great-nephew for ten days at the start of the growing season. _A touch white around the gills_ as the Gaffer had put it. The invitation to Gammidge had improved his colour to a marked degree but Sam’s efforts to familiarise him with the essential details of Gamgee ancestry had seemingly miscarried. It was enough to make a hobbit wish himself an orphling.

“Bladderdash. _That lad could charm the pips from an apple_ is what my old dad – “ Sam blushed and ducked his head. “I won’t hear no more about it, sir, if it’s all the same.”

“I see,” said Frodo and bridged the ensuing silence by poking a sedge stalk down the stem of his pipe. It was a lengthy silence punctuated with the occasional _tchah_ of someone who cleaned his briar less often than he should. Sam waited until the damp tinder had ignited and the smell of Old Toby was wafting past his hat brim before he ventured to raise his eyes.

“Meaning no –“ he began but Frodo had a crinkle above his nose that caused Sam’s thoughts to bunch up like sheep at a gate. “Bust it!”

“We might have settled this days ago if you hadn’t blurted out ‘naked hobbits in the parlour’.”

“Settled what, Mr Frodo?” Sam was not aware of anything that ought to be settled unless it was his own uneasy stomach but his ears pricked at the word ‘naked’. Had he spoken in his sleep at _The Dry Bob_?

“The fate of the vacant bedroom – not that Bag End suffers a lack of vacant rooms – “ The crinkle deepened as the spectre of responsibility for his inheritance loomed beyond the pipeweed smoke. “The bedroom adjacent to the hole made in the pantry wall by Sancho Proudfoot. It – “

“You taught him a lesson and no mistake!” exclaimed Sam, bristling with pride in the power of his master’s right arm. “Turfed him out good and proper.”

Frodo quelled him with a look.

“You said ‘tell me what, sir’ and I’m striving to do so.”

“Aye?” Sam had shifted plastering to the bottom of his list since the excavation was in the larger pantry where Frodo stored the jelly moulds and an array of white pudding basins. No one cared tuppence for either but had the two Boffins and a Bolger joined their strength to Sancho’s the hole could have tunnelled straight through to Bywater rather than fetched up behind the wainscot of Belladonna Took’s lying-in chamber. What a to-do there would have been in that case! Even so, if the Gaffer hadn’t pressed him to _plant them leeks_ in the twinkling of a bed-post maybe –

“Is it the vegetables, sir? My dad –“

“I have no idea why vegetables should enter into it ,” said Frodo, “but that’s your affair. If the bedroom were to be furnished from Bilbo’s mathoms – a wardrobe, a jug and bowl, a _mirror_ \-- it would suit a single hobbit of active habits. A jobbing gardener, for example, though I trust that he’d no longer have time to ‘job’.”

“Don’t you fear!” said Sam, who was glad to have his sit-me-down on a fallen alder limb while ‘bedroom’, ‘single hobbit’, and ‘gardener’ sorted themselves out. He was all of a tremble. “Live at Bag End?”

“You’re continually about the place, and given the multitude of near indistinguishable Gamgees in Hobbiton I’d be surprised if anyone missed you.” Frodo had wedged his cloak under the pack flap and was almost hidden from view as he struggled to reassume the monstrosity. A pair of velvet-clad legs, a walking stick, and a clenched fist were all that could be seen of him. “What do you say?”

“I’ve my own bed and –“

“You’ll want to paint the walls after you’ve laid the garden path. Bilbo kept his golf clubs there and, well –“ Frodo was unable to shrug due to the weight on his shoulders but he smiled apologetically at their surroundings as Sam sat lost in wonder. “Lovely weather but I’d welcome a preprandial nap in the comfort of our tent. Shall we go?”

“Yes, sir,” said Sam and jumped to his feet as if he had eaten two full breakfasts, elevenses, and a hot lunch at the _Ivy Bush_. It was a paltry answer but he soon found a means to voice his feelings.

“_Six lads went to mow…_

And Frodo accompanied him.


End file.
